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Phat Loot Phriday: Ruby Drape of the Mysticant

2007-09-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

Who knew a piece of cloth on your back could be so badass?

Name: Ruby Drape of the Mysticant
Type: Epic Cloak
Armor: 105
Abilities:

+22 Stamina, +21 Intellect
Improves spell hit rating by 18 (hot for a cloak)
+30 spell damage and healing, which is even hotter, especially for an item from Karazhan. There are better caster cloaks in the game, but they're all from higher level raids, so get this one and you'll be set for a while.

How to Get It: As Kirk might say, KarazhAAAAAAAANNN!!! Prince Malchezaar, one of the last bosses in Medivh's tower, drops this baby. In fact, getting there is only half the battle-- because this cloak is so great, you'll probably have a harder time winning the roll to get this than you will actually defeating the Prince. It's around a 10% drop, which ain't bad, but every Mage, Shaman, Warlock, and maybe a Moonkin or two are going to be after this cloak, so it's really more luck than anything.

But the good news is that once you get it, you're pretty much set-- there are sidegrades coming up, but there's really nothing that matches up to it until you hit Kael'thas.

Getting Rid of It: Disenchants into a Void Crystal, and sells to vendors for 3g 71s 96c.

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A friend for life, or pet of the week?

2007-09-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

00hshiny is asking a question about what Hunter pet to get for raiding on WoW Ladies, but something even more interesting struck me about her situation: she's made it all the way to 67 with a pet she's had since the beginning.

I know it happens (my friend went all the way with his first pet), but I've leveled one Hunter and am now working on a second, and I can't imagine leveling all the way up with just one pet-- it would get too boring after a while! Hunters, have you done it?

Of course you'd need to train other pets at some point, just to get more skills. And it's very common for Hunters to reach 70, and then get different pets for different activities-- a PvP pet vs. a soloing or raiding pet. But I wonder exactly how many pets Hunters actually play with (as in, fight with enough to reach the highest loyalty levels). BRK apparently changes pets all the time, but what about the rest of you Hunters? How many pets have you had, in terms of actually using, not just taming for learning skills, from 1-70?

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WoW Moviewatch: The Furbolg Crusade

2007-09-15T23:53:00.000-07:00

little machinima is exactly what you'd think it is -- a reworking of The Burning Crusade trailer into a new expansion showing off a most devious foe, the Furbolg. Oh, sure, you make friends with the Timbermaw Furbolg in Winterspring and don't really have any interaction with them after that, but that doesn't mean they aren't a threat!

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Death Knights not welcome at town picnic

2007-09-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

It's a problem: here you are, a master of your very own runed blade, a summoner of an army of undead, an immensely powerful tank and damage-dealer -- and yet no one will let you into the lore party over at Starshine Shadowstrider's house!

"Yuckie!" they say. "He got his powers from the Lich King! ...Eww!"

"But I turned against him!" you proclaim in your defense. "I wised up and came back to the Light, sorta. Okay not really but I'm still not completely bad! It's like... fighting..." your voice gradually gets quieter as party-goers stop listening, "... fighting fire with ... fire. Dammit. I'm gonna go kill Onyxia by myself! That'll show 'em."

Yes indeed. It's looking like the future's going to be pretty rough for Death Knights. As Nethaera explained, "It's most likely that Death Knights aren't going to find themselves being popular guests at the town picnic."

But Death Knights aren't alone in dealing with this sort of thing. "Keep in mind," Nethaera points out, "that Warlocks aren't generally welcomed with open arms either (depending on the culture of the race in question)." Here we have a good role model for plucky summoners of the undead: Warlocks are magic users who use the powers of the Burning Legion against the Burning Legion itself! Have not the Alliance and the Horde not gradually come to accept that just because some people happen to summon demons, cause agony, corruption and ruin, as well as steal people's souls -- that doesn't make them inherently evil, right?

So it is with Death Knights. So what if you betrayed all the peoples of Azeroth to go and serve the Lich King for a little while? So what if his taint of undeathiness is still flowing through you while you draw those unholy runes and create zombies? You can now go to Shattrath to have your picture taken with a Naaru! Your reputation should be squeaky clean.

While Blizzard may yet find a plausible reason for Death Knights to be fighting against the Lich King rather than with him, keep in mind that even if that doesn't work out, you've got one magic word that will make everything okay. Whenever people won't trust you or play with you just because it would seem that you might possibly be technically evil (on the outside)...

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Arcane Brilliance: Five magetacular mods

2007-09-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, your one-stop mage shop for all your magical caster needs. Last time we spoke about the macros mages should know and love, those little additions to your game play that will make you even more uber than you already are. At the end of that article I mentioned we would next talk about the addons that mages simply shouldn't do without, and even the comments in that article mentioned a few (thanks for stealing my thunder guys.)

This isn't to say that as a mage it is required that you use mods when you play. Think of these more as the added features on your luxury sedan, the DVD player and the auto-adjusting seats. The mods I use are an extension of the way I already play, but they don't play the game for me. Try them out, see if they work for you, and let us know how it went. Like I've said before, no one can tell you how to play your class; we can only suggest things that might make playing your class easier or more fun.

Cryolysis: This beauty of a mod is a radial menu that puts every spell you need at your fingertips. The main sphere of the interface can be configured to display info on your health and mana in either numbers or percents, and show your cooldowns on evocation and mana gems.

Cryolysis also has some great alert features, letting you know when your sheep breaks for instance. It gives you a nifty readout that tracks the cooldowns on your spells. You can also have the mod automatically restock your reagents at the vendor so you never run out of that blasted Arcane Powder (not that this has ever happened to me).

Many of the features in this mod seem to be automations of macros I created on my own, for instance the /party alert letting them know you've polymorphed a target, or that you're summoning a portal that will take them to a certain city. All in all, the word for Cryolysis is concise. It coalesces just about everything you do as a mage into one simple menu. I call it beautiful.

WaterboyLoc: Until we get our Water Fountain and Feast Table spells, Waterboy is here to help you provide food and drink to your party or raid. You might think this is too simple to add to the list, but think about all the time you spend making/trading food and water for the 25-man raid, and you'll realize that Waterboy really can be a useful friend.

The menu allows you to summon your consumables and when done you drag them to the box to the right and hit trade. That's it. The addon automatically trades the water or food with your target, saving uber amounts of hassle. The interface will also let you right-click to use the products of your effort, be they mana gems, water or food. Simple, beautiful, and it this version is available with localization for those with French or German clients.

Quartz: Ah Quartz, wherever was I without you? This is one of the most useful mods I have ever loaded into my UI. At its core Quartz is a modular casting bar, and its most powerful component is its latency information. Basically Quartz lets you know when you truly stop casting a spell, based on your current latency. After you install the addon, you go in and create a stopcasting macro for each of your spells (read up on how to do this by looking at the last Arcane Brilliance.) You are then able to stop casting without actually interrupting the spell, and begin to cast the next one immediately. Quartz's latency feature can increase your spell damage by up to one-third because you are simply casting more spells.

The other feature I love to death with Quartz is the multiple casting bars. When I cast Pyroblast, for instance, Quartz puts up a bar that lets me know exactly how long my target is affected by the spell. I've gotten in the habit of looking at these bars almost more than I watch the health of the target. It's a great way to keep track of when the Frost Nova will break, or when you will have to resheep that Naga in Heroic Underbog.

Omen Threat Meter: If you've ever wondered why you keep dying, chances are it's because you're pulling aggro off your tank. A threat meter is the key to keeping you alive, particularly if you are doing decent damage. The key to Omen (or even its low-powered cousin KTM) is having everyone in your party install it. If they are running KTM Omen will read their information, but not the other way around. I find Omen to be more concise, easier to read, and certainly more accurate than KTM. It has a couple of features KTM does not, like that little trick of framing your screen in red when you pull threat off the tank.

Omen is a WoWAce addon, which means you'll need to download the WoWAce updater to get access to it, but you definitely will want to do that because our last entry is also only available through WoWAce, and you can update both with the click of a button.

Decursive 2.0: The big boy is back from the dead, resurrected with a Soulstone of fabulousness. If you have never encountered Decursive before you're in for a real treat, because here is where mage addons began. Long ago Decursive would populate a list for you of who was cursed in your party, and all you had to do was click on their names and the curse would be lifted. Blizzard found this to be too much automation for their tastes and stopped the instant decursing in its tracks. That was a sad, sad day for mages, but luckily Ace2 has provided us with a new and improved version of this very essential mod.

Decursive now has a handy set of clickable little boxes that light red when a party member is cursed, and in addition lets you know when someone is charmed. It also has an auditory alert for when sheep break, quite handy I must say. Just about everything about Decursive 2.0 is easier to deal with now, and I just about passed out with joy when I was able to use this beautiful little number again.

Well, that's about it for this Arcane Brilliance. I have to go update my addons now and then set about farming money to buy enchants for my newly finished Spellfire set. Next time look for a nice chunky discussion on bonuses to spell damage. Until then, may all the mobs you farm be melee, and may your mana pool never run dry.

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Guildwatch: Careful what you ask for...

2007-09-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

I was just joking when I said "video or it didn't happen" to a guild's announcement of a Paladin-tanked Prince kill last week, but they weren't messing around: they actually got me video. You guys didn't have to go to all that trouble! But since you did, I'll say this: Ok, some Paladins, in some situations, with the right group makeups, may possibly, at times, be able to tank.

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Blizzard is fishing for screenshots

2007-09-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

Blizzard would like your fishing screenshots to help fill out their World of Warcraft Guide. If your screenshot is chosen, your character name and screenshot will be displayed in the guide.

So if you aspire to have your fishing or in-game photography skills on display, submit your screenshot to the Royal Photographic Society of Azeroth. There is a long list of guidelines to follow as well as a submission form at that link.

I took the above screenshot from the current fishing page in the guide. My personal request is to not take any more fishing pics with that creepy kid in it. Three of the "candid" fishing shots on that page include that boy. The Horde is rather unrepresented on the fishing page as well.

Hopefully taking screenshots while you fish will make the process slightly less boring. Good luck!

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WoW Moviewatch: Rise of the Lich King

2007-09-12T23:25:00.000-07:00

We know that the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, will take us to Northrend to fight Arthas. But if you haven't played Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne and seen the story of how Arthas became the Lich King, you may well wonder what all the fuss is about. Blizzard released a three part series of short stories about the Rise of the Lich King, (and we have our own summary here at WoW Insider) but now there is a movie version as well. This is a compilation of machinima before machinima was an art form for the masses -- Blizzard used their own animated sprites within the game to tell the story, with good actors providing their voices in between (and sometimes during) battles. Sylvictus has recorded these scenes from Warcraft 3 and presented them here for us over at Warcraft Movies. Even though it clocks in at a whopping 52 minutes, Sylvictus said that he had to cut a lot of things out in order to keep the story even that short:

* Fall of Sylvanas and her freedom which lead to the founding of the Forsaken.
* Sylvanas betrayal and failed murder attempt on Arthas.
* The 3 dreadlords that takes control over Lordaeron as well as their war with Sylvanas.
* The perils Arthas and Anub'Arak faces in Azjol-nerub.
* The scenes with Sapphiron, most Muradin clips etc.

Although I agree it's probably better to keep the movie to a manageable size, I would have personally liked to see this extra footage too. Perhaps one day Sylvictus will do an expanded version, or a movie all about Sylvanas.

Keep in mind that you'll want to skip this if you intend on playing through Warcraft 3 and enjoying the story experience first hand. If you don't have the time or interest, however, you may enjoy this taste of what it's like.

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Insomnia, or, I can't sleep so I play when no one else is on

2007-09-12T23:16:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest problems I have is that, from time to time, I suffer from extremely painful bouts of insomnia. I've had this issue ever since I was a very young boy, and it still reoccurs from time to time. This has lead me to discover the joys and pains of logging on to play World of Warcraft in the middle of the night. Since I tend to play on servers in the same basic time zone as I am (Edmonton, Alberta if you're curious) this often leads me to discover that it can be an entirely different world when most of the server is asleep.

One of the large positives is that I often catch the Auction House when a bid is about to expire - I got my BE pally a Sword of the Magistrate for practically nothing not an hour ago, for example. It's also a lot easier for me to do quests that involving farming mobs that are otherwise popular either because the quest itself is popular or because they drop something folks want, like the elementals in the badlands that everyone and their parents tend to farm.

There are some big downsides, though. For starters, instances? Forget about it. If I can find two people on at my level at any given time it's a small miracle. Also, when you're bleary eyed from lack of sleep, that may not be the best time to try and do an annoying escort quest. Admittedly, I tend to find escort quests in general to be the second most annoying quests in the game, with "bring me x number of the eyes/hearts/brains of y" being the absolute worst, but I want to level my characters so I do them anyway.

Is anyone else out there playing on the graveyard shift? It sometimes seems like I'm totally alone, but a few folks must be toiling away alongside me. Do you prefer it or are you just there sometimes? What's good, what's bad about it for you? I sometimes like the relative peace and quiet, but I miss being able to get a Sunken Temple group when I need one. And I can't say that playing the game makes me feel any more rested.

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Studying the WoW Tribe: Gamasutra asks "Is there life after World of Warcraft?"

2007-09-12T23:07:00.000-07:00

Gamasutra has an in-depth interview with several academics asking "Is there life after World of Warcraft?" Neils Clark suggests that the majority of of MMO players don't spread themselves out over multiple MMO games, but instead migrate like a flock of birds or a "gamer tribe".

I do think that the same chunk of players went from EQ to Galaxies to WoW with some dabbling in games like AO, DAOC and CoH inbetween. Obviously, Blizzard attracted about 8 million extra people to our "tribe", however, so I wonder if our tribe just got a lot bigger or if we are now just one tribe of many.

Clark interviews 5 academics about how gamers will move from WoW to other games and what what has made WoW the powerhouse that it is. The discussions of social networks, lures of new fantasies and the ramifications of a WoW collapse are very interesting.

Clark also says that he thinks WoW is the "king of the mountain" not because it is the best game out there but because it attracted the "right people". I say the "right people" are playing because it's currently the best game out there. What do you think?

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Bigger backpacks (and more) coming soon

2007-09-12T22:46:00.001-07:00

Gaslaw asks on the forums whether backpacks will be bigger in Wrath of the Lich King, and (kind of surprisingly) Drysc says it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

I guess it's not that surprising-- it does seem like we are carrying more stuff around lately, in terms of quest and rep items, if not just plain old extra gear sets. We've already had lots of ideas on how to fix things, from creating more keychain setups, to just plain coming up with more bag space. But fortunately, Drysc doesn't seem to have just bigger bags in mind-- he seems to have "better stuff in the works."

What that could be, we have no idea. Pack mules? Dimensional suitcases (made, naturally, of sapient pearwood)? Finally, player housing? Drysc says we'll find out soon.

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A'dal is prepared

2007-09-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Some of you longtime readers may remember a while back when we posted video of A'dal (the big floaty Naaru in Shattrath's center) getting the crap beat out of him. In fact, that was the post where I coined the Lord British Postulate, which stated that if anything existed as a live creature in an MMO, someone, somewhere would try to kill it. Why hasn't that caught on by now?

But apparently A'dal is a pushover no more. When someone kited a Fel Reaver into Shattrath (that's the big tangle of lifeless metal in the upper left of the picture above), A'dal laid the smack down with a 114,952 hit. Naaru please! He ain't playin', son.

A sharp increase in the strength of the Naaru, or just a sign that Blizzard really doesn't want anyone messing around with beings made of energy? You decide.

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Heroic 3-year old arises to save Azeroth [Updated]

2007-09-06T01:31:00.000-07:00

juBBjuBB is the proud father of one very charismatic girl who, aside from being absolutely adorable, is also able to play WoW! As he says in his forum post "YOU may have been GANKED by our 3yr old!", Charisma was captivated with her parents gaming activities and started out playing WoW at 1 and a half years old, doing very basic things like running and jumping and chasing bunnies, but since then has actually gotten the hang of some of the basic mechanics of the game. She has learned that you don't want that green bar to get empty or you'll "fall down," as well as the fact that the alliance ("blue") is good and the ugly ones ("red") are bad -- or enemies in PvP anyway. She knows to cap a flag and grind her way up in levels, too apparently.

Some people who read this story cry foul. How can a 3 year-old level to 20 "by herself" (as her myspace page claims) without being able to read? Also, it certainly does seem a bit much to say that she can "gank" people. I also doubt that she can play at the same level as, say, the proverbial 12 year-old WoW player could. My bet is that when the father says "level to 20 by herself" he probably means "without doing any quests and with me watching and talking her through things." And when he says "gank," he means "overpower a level 30ish opponent with a level 60ish rogue alt of her parents using very basic play tactics," which, hello gankers everywhere, even a 3 year-old can do by pressing just a few buttons! Good for her, I say, but shame on anyone over 9.

But I digress. Playing three to four hours per week maxiumum, juBBjuBB says, is helping Charisma get excited to learn the alphabet and cooperative teamplay. Fatherly love and pride in such progress may be leading him to exaggerate a little bit about her gameplay skill, or maybe leave certain details about it to our own common sense -- but can you blame him? If I had a little kid who showed a strong aptitude in any area, from computers to cartoons, I might need to rein in my superlative praise too. She may or may not be the one heroine destined to be the best gamer in the world, but she's the pride of her father's life, and in his Azerothian sky there's no star shining brighter than her.

Update: More from Charisma's father after the jump! You may find it hard to believe...

Hello!

I am Charisma's 'Papi.'

I have appreciated reading so many constructive comments and points of view on this topic! She will be thrilled to see her picture on WoW Insider!

It seems some information was left to speculation regarding her ability: She CAN perform a class role in a group with minimal direction. She has learned through initial guidance & trial and error the complexities of the game, it's interface, PvP, quests, world navigation, etc.

She will need some development before she can go 1 vs 1 with an opponent of a similar level. The original topic on the official forums was "YOU may have been ganked by our 3yr old." IE: your lowbie may have been steamrolled as she passed by ;]

Her teamplay is spot on....we have tried her out in a few instances and she understands different classes have different jobs. She prefers to play more hack n' slash as a melee class (Feral Druid, Rogue, Warrior), but she can show a group full support as a healing class.

As a priest, she knows to sit and drink between pulls, that she needs to fill up everyone's green bar, and whoever is in front gets a bubble. She knows healer stay in the back and don't poke their heads around corners till the tank does.

Once she got started, she watched those healthbars like a hawk!

I hope you enjoyed reading her profile and seeing what she can do.

I say give him the benefit of the doubt. It's true that some kids are gifted in special ways. If one child can play WoW at three, perhaps another is making her own music, or else making up simple stories. Who knows? I'm not a father yet, so I'm still looking forward to having my own little genius -- and I have absolutely no real clear idea what little children this age are capable of. Maybe I just like believing in massive potential.

Many of you addressed the question: How young is too young to start playing WoW? For me, the greater question is, if a 3 year-old can do it (or as some parents have said, 4 year-olds), why is it still so much fun for us as adults? Is it nothing short of miraculous that a game could entertain the very young, the very old, and everyone in between?

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The BBC examines love in Azeroth

2007-09-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting piece up over at the BBC's State of Play blog about how online games are becoming more and more social places, not just for friendly relationships, but for romantic ones as well. While meeting online used to be an embarassing thing for couples, nowadays it's much, much more common, and what better place to meet online than in a social MMORPG like World of Warcraft?

Unfortunately, the idea doesn't quite fly with me. In an online situation like, say Facebook, you're more or less playing yourself-- odds are you've posted your own picture, your own opinions, and your own favorite music. But in World of Warcraft, you're playing a character. And even if that character isn't completely different from your real-life persona (most people actually are themselves in the game, unlike hardcore roleplayers), it's still different enough, in my opinion, to be a significant barrier to actually judging someone as a relationship partner.

But that's just me-- lots of people have found significant others in online games, and even more have met lots of people in MMOs, and then actually become better friends or partners after meeting them in real life. But while an online space like Myspace or Facebook might be very conducive to getting a real sense of new people, an online game set in a fictional universe like WoW is still too separate from the real world to allow for a real love connection on its own.

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Two Bosses Enter: Illidan Stormrage vs. Kael'thas Sunstrider

2007-09-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

A new week means it's time for a new edition of Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy deathmatches where we pit two raid bosses against each other – and you get to tell us who emerges victorious. Two bosses will enter our arena, but only one will get to leave! We're going to keep pitting boss against boss until we finally emerge with a single victor. This week we'll be judging a fight between two powerful Outland bosses: Illidan Stormrage, the final boss in the Black Temple, and Kael'thas Sunstrider, the final boss in the Eye of Tempest Keep. Curious about what might happen if these two bosses met up? Keep reading!

Illidan has a wide array of abilities at his disposal to wipe out any opposition. He's capable of heavy melee damage, high fire and shadow damage, and can summon a variety of minions to keep you occupied. Illidan's abilities at the start of the fight are as follows:

Shear reduces the health of his main target by 60%
Illidan will occasionally jump into the air and land in a patch of highly damaging blue flame
Illidan will randomly target players to cast a parasites debuff on, which does shadow damage over time and then summons two parasites to attack the target
Draw soul does heavy fire damage to targets in front of Illidan and heals Illidan

For phase 2, Illidan offers a different range of ways to kill you:

Illidan will summon two massive fire elementals, the Flames of Azzinoth
Every 30 seconds, Illidan will sweep an eye beam across the platform, doing heavy fire damage and leaving a trail of damaging fire behind it
Illidan shoots fireballs that do splash damage
Dark Barrage does heavy shadow damage to a random target, though it's rarely cast

For phase 3, Illidan acts nearly the same as phase 1, only with the addition of agonizing flames, a fire spell that does damage on initial impact and damage over time afterwards.

For phase 4 (a quick phase, at 30 seconds long), Illidan will unleash the demon within. He turns into a black demon with powerful abilities, but is unable to move. During this phase, he'll cast:

Shadow blast, a high damage shadow attack with splash damage
Flame burst, an AoE fire-based DoT that does splash damage
Aura of dread does a high amount of shadow damage over time as well as increasing the damage taken by shadow spells (stacks)

Phase 5 is like phase 3, only with the addition of the following:

Maiev Shadowsong joins the fight -- and though we usually don't consider adds for fights, I'm keeping Maiev in this fight because Illidan is just incredibly powerful. (And Maiev would be hunting him down whether he was in the Black Temple or dueling with Kael'thas outside of Orgrimmar.)
Illidan can enrage, randomly.

For those of you familiar with the fight, you'll notice something missing -- this is because we aren't considering instant-kill abilities. In a one-on-one encounter, they make the fight predictable and dull. However, if you're still curious for the full details of the fight, check Bosskillers.

Despite what you may have been lead to believe by repeated viewings of Azerothian Super Villains, Kael'thas is no pushover. However, for the purposes of this fight he's certainly more so than he is in the game -- in order to make these fights as fair as possible, we try to consider the bosses on their own, without any adds that might be in the room at the start of the fight. This means Kael'thas doesn't get the aid of his advisors, and we skip straight into phase four of the encounter, where you first trade blows with Kael'thas himself. The skills Kael'thas has at his disposal are as follows:

Mind control, though in a one-on-one fight this would do little but bore the audience
An arcane explosion (arcane AOE) that disorients anyone hit by it
Can summon a Pheonix which will hellfire (fire AOE that damages the Pheonix) and spawns an egg on death. If the egg isn't destroyed quickly, another Pheonix will spawn.
A high-damage fireballs and pyroblasts (fire attacks)

After 50%, Kael'thas will stop using mind control and pyroblast, and start using nether beam (a chain lightning-esque ability), nether vapor (clouds that give a stacking HP-reducing debuff to anyone who enters them), and gravity lapse (which causes everyone to levitate for 30s).

And that's all there is for Kael'thas -- full details of the fight, for the curious, are gone over at MMO Champion.

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"The Karazhan mistake"

2007-09-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

AFK Gamer's got a great post up about what he calls "The Karazhan Mistake." At BlizzCon, and now in Leipzeig, Blizzard has been patting themselves on the back for the 10man raid of Karazhan-- it's clearly the most popular raid in the expansion (does that have anything to do with the fact that it's the first raid most guilds do?), and so they say the 10man raid idea of theirs is the bomb. Along with the new Zul'Aman, we can expect to see more 10mans in Wrath of the Lich King.

But AFK says they've learned the wrong lesson. While Karazhan is definitely popular, creating a 10man raid in the guild progression path (remember, UBRS didn't start as a 10man, and it wasn't really a progression instance) was a mistake. It's more or less where all the guild drama and frustration in the expansion has come from-- guilds with only 10 people are rare and far between, and so most guilds have to schedule and run multiple raid IDs just to get everyone through there. And now (eight months after the expansion has dropped), while most guilds have finally got Karazhan (and all that raid coordination) down pat, they're dealing with another problem: beefing back up to 25 for the rest of the raids. Blizzard's making guilds jump through all these hoops, and deal with all of this group A/B drama, and they're citing Karazhan as a success?

AFK's solution is a simple one: lower the cooldown on raid IDs. (His other solution is to have raid IDs be guildwide, but letting only 10 people in a guild run Karazhan weekly is a terrible idea.) That would more or less take the raid out of progression (in essence, turn it into UBRS), and let you go there whenever you had 10 people ready and willing, leaving the real raiding to the 25 mans.

Personally, I love Karazhan. It's a great dungeon with some cool bosses and lore, and Blizzard's right: it's how raids should be done. It's just too bad that, by creating a great 10 man in a world full of 25 man raids, they caused guilds (especially guilds just starting to raid) so much trouble.

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WoW Moviewatch: How to beat a warlock

2007-09-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

As we all know, warlocks are just so OP, it's very hard to beat one in a one-on-one PvP situation. Thankfully, however, Makale has discovered their secret weak spots, and is willing to share them with the world. The introduction in this video is a bit slow, but once you get to the meat of it, there's no denying that these tips are the best you can get.

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Patch 2.2 may take "weeks" longer

2007-09-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

MMO Champion's about right-- patch 2.2 is likely not coming for a matter of weeks. Since background downloading started a little while ago, we all figured this Tuesday or next was looking pretty good for a patch update, but Hortus on the forums alludes to new PTR patches "several times in the upcoming weeks," which is a good indication that we've got a while to go on the PTR.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we're looking at a November patch-- it could be that the PTR updates are for 2.3, or that 2.2 will drop with hotfixes coming later, or that Hortus just doesn't have the information from the devs right. But take a deep breath-- even if it takes a few more weeks for a new patch, odds are we'd all rather have it "right" than "right now."

And Boubouille says that if it takes this long for 2.2, he doesn't see how they'll release the expansion by next January, which is just plain laughable. Sorry Bou, we love you and all, but WotLK isn't dropping anytime before July 2008, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if we didn't see it until early 2009. It's not that we won't have content until then-- Zul'Aman is coming, and a new arena season will show up before then (maybe even two), as well as guild banks, a new CoT instance, and of course the Sunwell. But if you're still thinking we'll see Arthas as soon as January, time to stop holding your breath.

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WoW is a Work of Art, part 1: A journey into Azeroth

2007-09-03T18:41:00.000-07:00

The day I walked into the store to buy World of Warcraft, I had been taking care of my mother as she underwent chemotherapy for brain cancer, and I desperately needed something to do that wasn't cooking, cleaning, sorting pills, or running errands. I needed something that would connect me with people while at the same time letting me stay at home and care for someone I loved.

When I picked up a box with a pretty, yet severe night elf woman's face on the cover, I wasn't thinking, "I want to get to level 60 and start raiding Molten Core for epic gear!" or even "I'm going to be a PvP god!" Instead, I was hoping to create characters with a personal background, with feelings and ideas all their own, and act them out in an imaginary world where no one knew who I really was, a world in which our purpose was to share creatively and interact as a team, not to make money or exchange gossip.

In short, I wanted to roleplay. But what I got was something much more than even a roleplaying experience, more than me and my characters, more than an endless stream of quests and rewards, experience and reputation, monsters and loot. I found myself in a world filled with its own people -- real people -- and a series of problems for these people to overcome together in order to progress and travel even deeper into this world. At every stage, I found something new opening up to me, whether it was access to more abilities of my own, more ways to interact with others, more vast landscapes to please my eye, or more stories to capture my imagination.

A long time has past since I first bought that box. My mother has recovered from her treatments and regained a lot of her independence. My "real life" has largely gone back to normal, except that now World of Warcraft is a part of it. I no longer have some need for a way to spend time with people without leaving home. Instead I have new friends and special activities we like to participate in. These friends and activities make me feel as though I'm growing and changing as a person too, although for a long time it was hard to pinpoint why.

I had previously gone through a long period of life in which I thought I had given up video games for good. "A waste of time!" I said. "They keep you at home, mashing buttons when you could otherwise be out spending time with people, or doing something productive." Now that I had a new game that felt different and had captured my imagination, I heard other people around me and in the media speaking of games in the same way that I once had. Of my favorite game in particular, they often spoke in slightly hushed tones, as if discussing cocaine, and they brought up how they heard on TV that it ruined relationships. If one questioned them as to what World of Warcraft really was, I doubt they could say very much, except that it was something bad.

I thought long and hard about this game. Was it really a waste of time? Was I addicted? Did it affect my life in a negative way? What was I getting from this game that I couldn't get from real life? Why not put away the game and read a book, for example, or call up my friends and visit the park?

A book, I realized, doesn't let me talk back. I love books and I love reading, but I also love interacting as much as I can with my media. I love walking in parks with friends, but the park does not present challenges for us to learn and overcome together. The redwood forests of California are so far away for me that a trip there would be hard to contemplate, but the imaginary landscape of Feralas, while obviously inferior to the real thing, is still just a few minutes away.

I realized that my love of the world -- the real world -- only increased as I journeyed through Blizzard's fantasy realm. On multiple levels, from music to problem-solving, from awesome visuals to collective storytelling, I had actually come to relate to WoW as an organic work of art in which I can grow and move even as the artwork itself grows and changes over time.

What is a work of art if not an expression of the human experience and imagination, which touches your heart in some way and makes your world a little more meaningful? WoW is undoubtedly a beautiful environment, with breathtaking things to see, powerful music and sounds, as well as difficult challenges to overcome, and imaginative stories to tell. All these have an effect on our minds and spirits. Furthermore, it is changing all the time, with new content, refinement to old content, and new ways of interacting with other people. Not only does it have all the traditional elements of art, it allows people to connect together, compete and cooperate within that art, as if it really were a world of its own. In its own way, the power of World of Warcraft to connect people together is its greatest artistic achievement of all.

Like any powerful artwork, this game has made its mark on my life. I entered Azeroth just for something creative and social to do, and stayed because I found something in this world and its community that captivated me, an exprience as powerful as any great film, book, painting or poem. One day, society at large will come to recognize World of Warcraft as a work of art too. Once the emerging global culture has come to understand and accept games alongside film and literature, with their own potential as well as its pitfalls, artists in the field of game-design can begin to exploit its opportunities for creative expression in ways far greater than any game has thus far achieved. WoW's successors will things of beauty unlike anything we can imagine.

"WoW is a Work of Art" is a three-part series. Part one focuses on the author's personal discovery that games are an art form, based on his experiences in World of Warcraft. Part two will explore how WoW is not merely another work of visual and musical art, but a work of interactive, team-oriented problem-solving art as well. Part three will look at WoW as a stage on which some players choose to play writer, director, actor and audience all at the same time, in their own improvised theater.

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A case of Murky envy

2007-09-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

Wandering Goblin's got Murky envy-- Elvyra was lucky enough to go to BlizzCon 2005 and get the special Murky pet while there, but she redeemed it on the EU servers, and now plays on the US servers, so no Murky pet for her. Despite pleading with ingame GMs and even the higher-ups, she hasn't been able to get the Murky back. And while she did go to BlizzCon 2007 and get a Murloc suit, it's no comparison-- not only does it break on combat, but it just doesn't fit. That doesn't mean it's not fun, though-- if you're waiting to hear about yours from the podcast on Saturday, wait just a little longer-- we'll be contacting the winner tomorrow.

Still, Elvyra's problem isn't the biggest one with the Murky suit-- most people have the problem of not getting one at all. Yes, it's special that Blizzard gave it out only at that convention, but people who now want the pet can't currently ever get it again. Blizzard did give it out once more-- they gave Lurky out to folks who had problems with the CE of Burning Crusade-- and so why can't they do that again? Even if we never see Murky given out, what about Gurky? Or Turky (a Thanksgiving item, obviously)? Or Jerky, who's a little meaner than the other Murlocs?

Doesn't matter much to me-- as I said before, I'm not a huge fan of Murky. But there are some good ways to let people in on the fun while still keeping the original pet exclusive.

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Forum Post of the Day: Frost magi in Northrend

2007-09-03T18:30:00.000-07:00

Nayami over on Area 52 makes a good point in a recent thread on the official Mage forums about how magi must usually respec depending on which raid they're running:

"So I was talking with a few random raiders on my server, and I was informed that SSC and TK has a large amount of frost immunities?

I mean, I can accept the fact that fire does more damage than frost overall. That is the way it is and ever shall be. But I liked Frost because of the pvp viability and utility it brough [sic] outside of raid bosses and still managed to hold its own in terms of DPS. You weren't going to top any meters but you didnt suck. But Immunities? I dread to see how many things will be frost immune in Northrend."

Magi switching their spec depending on what they're raiding is nothing new -- back in the old days of Molten Core, you had to spec into Frost or Arcane. Other raid instances such as BWL, ZG and Naxx did allow Fire spec magi to raid, but it seems like raid mobs having immunity to certain schools of magic is a step in the wrong direction.

Nayami (and others in that thread) also point out something I hadn't thought about before -- what will Frost spec magi do when they get to Northrend? There are bound to be many mobs immune to Frost spells in the icy roof of the world. Is it fair to make a certain class respec this often in order to DPS efficiently? And when was the last time anyone saw a mob that was immune to Shadow spells? Warlocks and shadow priests certainly haven't found any, as far as I can tell.

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Totem Talk: Shamans are awesome

2007-08-31T02:23:00.000-07:00

Another week, another Totem Talk, a column by and for shamans and those that love us. Well, okay, you don't have to love us to read it, but why wouldn't you? Look how cuddly we are! We even provide Bloodlust or Heroism for your 5 mans and raids. Don't you want to adopt one of us and take us home right now? No? What do you mean, no? Matthew Rossi is disappointed that you haven't already made a shaman plushie and cuddled it upon finishing this paragraph.

Okay, so my introductory column for Totem Talk went about like I expected, with most folks disagreeing with the idea that shamans need help. This isn't a new problem, of course, and it's not likely to go away for a while. Most players have enshrined the concept of shamans as OP and either deliberately or unknowingly exaggerate certain abilities (as an example, complaining that Grounding Totem, an ability which has a 15 second cast cooldown and which dies in one hit, is eating half of their frostbolts. How is that mathematically possible? Frostbolt has a max casting time of three seconds. You can cast five of them in the time it takes to cast one Grounding. It's just not possible for it to be eating half of your frostbolts, even assuming a one on one mage vs. shaman battle) but this happens to everyone. When I play my warrior, I see people complaining about 6k executes, and I'm sure every single class in the game has a similar ability or two that everyone complains about far more than it is actually capable of.

But this week there will be no complaining. No, this week we're going to celebrate shamans and what they're capable of and try and sell a really interesting and fun class to everyone in WoW. So read on for tales of high adventure! Or at least tales of stuff that would be good to have along on an adventure, anyway.
First up, let's take about Bloodlust. Ah, it's a shame we only get it at level 70. The alliance version is called Heroism, but it's essentially the same ability: it increases melee, ranged and spell casting speed by 30% for 40 seconds for the entire party. I think you can see the attraction right up front. It's really a smashingly good ability and the ten minute cooldown, while long, means you'll probably be able to use it on a couple of bosses in a 5 man. I pop Bloodlust at the 50% mark on every single boss in Kara and one of the hunters I run with (Hi, Vice!) says that it makes him fire like a machine gun. The duration in particular is very sweet, as a 40 second burst of increased speed has a significant effect. It's a well balanced, powerful and most importantly cool addition to the shaman arsenal. Sick and tired of that smirk on Murmur's skull-shark face? Pop this badboy off and watch him drop.

Next, let's talk about a few totems. There are some significant buffs in the totem kit bag that you may or may not know about. Shamans have totems for cleansing disease and poison, totems for regenerating mana and health, totems for buffing spell damage and adding strength and agility to a party, and of course there's the infamous Windfury totems that has positive and negative effects for melee. On the one hand, it's a great totem with a really powerful effect (20% chance of the effect of an extra attack with an additional 445 AP at level 70), but it also cleanses other enhancements off of everyone's main hand weapon, so if your rogue is trying for Wounding and Mind-Numbing poison on a boss, you may prefer to drop Grace of Air instead. Either are fine choices for the right situation... how can you say anything bad about an extra 77 agility? Of course, as a healbot I primarily drop my Wrath of Air totem in groups to get an additional 101 to my healing, plus the casters don't seem to mind it either. But I don't mind dropping another totem if asked - I generally use Windfury on the Maiden, in-between dropping Groundings every time the cooldown's up to keep from eating her nasty fire damage.

There are a lot more totems to talk about, but I don't want to swamp the post with just totems as if that's all we shamans can bring to the party. We're also walking soulstones! Okay, it's not quite that good, but Reincarnation can save a group in a couple of ways. For starters it can be used in the same manner as a soulstone, to res after a wipe, but a far more amusing use of the ability is to pop after death but while the fighting's still going on. Granted, you don't pop with full health or mana, but if you time it right and get the right totems down you can regenerate enough mana to throw heals off or resume ranged DPS, possibly turning the tide of a tight battle. I've even done both, using reincarnate to get up during a fight, dying again, and using my soulstone to get up after the fight to res and loot. Having a warlock and a shaman in your run means it's extremely hard to kill you off.

Let's not forget the healing spells... even an enhancement shaman can throw a few of these around to help with tough fights, especially my favorite heal, Chain Heal. Oh, how I love chain heal. Back when I was enhancement I would often use chain heal, self-targeted, to heal myself and 2 other melee in the middle of cleaves or AoE, since a meleeing shaman has various other ways to regenerate mana and can afford to throw a few heals around. And as a main healer it's an invaluable tool. I personally love a nice downranked chain heal to help keep the melee on their feet when fighting annoying bosses who love to cleave... just fire a few ch's into the main tank and watch the rogue's health stay up without you having to do much at all. It's a very mana efficient spell if you manage to heal three with it (it's also good for keeping up hunter pets and warlock minions for the same reason) and seems to benefit the most from sensible downranking, in my opinion.

Time to discuss an ability that enhancement brings to the party, the ever popular Unleashed Rage. If you don't love unleashed rage then you're obviously not melee. A 10% boost to everyone's AP for 10 seconds when the shammy crits? With the right buffs this could well be up for half a fight, and that means solid gains in DPS. You have to be within 20 yards of the shaman to get the benefit, admittedly, but that's usually not a problem when you're all crowding under someone's giant legs doing the old slice and dice anyway. For casters, there's the elemental talent Totem of Wrath, which adds to crit and spell hit and uses up a fire totem (which, to be honest, is often not used in an instance as most fire totems are like Searing Totem or Magma Totem, likely to break CC) but most elemental shammies I know tell me it's not that great. Still, combined with Wrath of Air it seems like it would have a nice synergy.
This is just a sample of what's good about shamans. I encourage you to run out and group with one immediately! And if you happen to be a shaman and you think I left out your favorite ability, please comment, we want to present as much positivity about our class as we can today.

Note - I edited my reference to the warrior ability Execute, as I could not find a way to make it clearer than I did, and it was making people focus more on it than on shamans. Comment #7 in this post spells out what I meant as well as I am able to do so, and it is out of the scope of the post.

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Your Perfect Swing

2007-08-31T02:10:00.000-07:00

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost

Who knew that Robert Frost played World of Warcraft and goblin . He didn't? Well, he should have. I think he would have played a survival hunter (maybe even a melee hunter) who did tailoringengineering. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I am going to take this time to vent (or rant, if you prefer) in as polite a manner as I can about something that really bugs me. It gets under my skin. It sometimes upsets me to the point that it affects the quality of my performance in-game. Before you continue reading this article, maybe you should go to the fridge and get yourself some comfort food, perhaps some of that meat loaf from a couple of nights ago and a nice glass of milk. There you go. All comfy? Ready for the jaw-dropping news that is going to change your perception of World of Warcraft?

There is no magic formula.

I see people looking for this magic formula in chat channels all the time. "What is the best profession for a..." or "What is the best spec for a..." or "What is the best weapon for a..." are all ways that sentences in these conversations start. Folks, you're missing the most crucial part of the equation: the human variable.

You should play what feels good for you. I think one of the biggest reasons some guilds are so frustrated in end-game content is because all their characters are photocopies of each other, or builds that they picked up off the forums. Do you think maybe that Blizzard reads these forums too? They know with mathematical precision what the most popular builds are. So do you think when they were designing the instances and raids for The Burning Crusade that they took this data into consideration? They would be foolish not to.

I'm not saying there is no benefit in using a tried and true configuration as a benchmark, and I'm not invalidating the benefit of our Build Shop series of articles. What I'm doing in this editorial-style piece is encouraging you, the player population, and especially the younger population, to experiment. So what if every mage in your guild is frost spec? If you want to roll arcane (or a mix of all three) then more power to you! If it makes you happy, do it! Be an individual! One of the most addictive qualities of World of Warcraft is the number of choices that Blizzard has offered us to personalize the abilities of our characters.

Six years ago Will Smith was in a movie called The Legend of Bagger Vance and one of the things his character said was "Yep... Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing... Somethin' we was born with... Somethin' that's ours and ours alone..." and this wisdom applies to World of Warcraft today. Please. I'm begging you. Our characters were not made to be all the same. Go out and discover your true authentic swing.

[With special thanks to Scott and Randy at The Instance for planting the seed a few weeks ago that blossomed into this article...]

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The ganking challenge: Deathwing edition

2007-08-31T02:03:00.000-07:00

We've already reported this week on new and exciting ways that players are coming up with to PvP, and it looks like another interesting and possibly unique challenge is taking place over on the Deathwing server. Ruzai, the creator of this thread over on the Deathwing forums that explains the details, calls it "The Ganking Challenge."

It seems to have generated lots of interest, and sounds very fun! It's world PvP based, obviously, but it provides enough structure and basic rules to turn ganking into a game. Here's a quick overview:

There are 3 targets at a time.
Post a screenshot of your kill, and then pick 3 new targets from your own faction.
All targets must be level 70 and not in a BG.
You can't tell the targets that they're being hunted.
Playing dirty is encouraged.
Example: Targets are now Narkan, Pacsan, and Mitsuomi. If Volarun was to come into Orgrimmar and gank Narkan and post a SS proving the kill, the Horde hunt would end and Volarun would get to choose 3 new alliance targets.

There are further details in the thread if you're interested, but I would love to have this challenge come to my server! I especially like that the active targets switch from Horde to Alliance after every kill, as it gives each side a chance at being the predator and the prey.

[ Thanks, Craver! ]

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Know Your Lore: Zul'jin

2007-08-31T01:51:00.000-07:00

If you may recall, back in the ancient days of yore two weeks ago, Know Your Lore did a report on the history of the trolls and promised to get to Zul'jin the following week. Then Know Your Lore got strep throat, which is a ridiculous thing to get at the age of 24. So I broke my promise and humbly apologize. Here is a monkey befriending a kitten.

Who: Zul'jin.

What: Leader of the Forest Trolls.

History: As stated in the previous article, all trolls came from one original species, but divided into several sub-groups based on their values. After they fought and lost a war with the night elves and the world got Sundered, they were tossed around to all different places. The forest trolls of the Amani Empire were sent back to northern Lordaeron, where they managed to rebuild a pretty extensive empire. Then the silly night elves showed up again, in the form of the arcane-addicted high elves, who put up magical runestones and built their city on sacred troll land.

The trolls attacked a couple of times, but were scared off by the arcane magic. There was an uneasy stalemate for several thousand years, but one day, the trolls launched their full forces at the elves. The elves called upon the humans of Arathor for help and agreed to teach them the secrets of magic. The humans and the elves routed the trolls in the Alterac Mountains, and the Amani Empire was beaten into submission. (Yes, I know I'm repeating myself but it's important, because ...) This is where Zul'jin comes in.

Zul'jin was a young male troll of the Amani tribe, the main leaders of the Amani Empire. There's no information on whether or not he fought in the Troll Wars (as the conflict between the Amani and the elves and humans was called by the victors), but it's highly unlikely, since it happened two thousand years before the First War and I'm not sure trolls are that long-lived. What is known is that when he became leader, after the Troll Wars, he led some daring raids on the outskirts of Quel'thalas and managed to unite all the forest trolls together into a rebuilt Amani Empire. The forest trolls were still pretty bitter about their loss in the Troll Wars, and harbored a deep grudge towards the humans and the high elves. Or maybe they were just racist against anyone without green skin, I don't know.

Zul'jin was kind of a visionary leader, and made grandiose plans to unite ALL the troll tribes. But the invasion of the Horde into Azeroth put the kibosh on those plans. The jungle trolls were down there in the thick of the invasion, near STV, but the forest trolls were largely left alone in their disunited and battered state. The troll tribes stayed out of the conflict , watching from the sidelines with a keen eye.

After the First War "ended" with Gul'dan's submission, the destruction of Stormwind, and Orgrim Doomhammer's ascension to chief, the remains of the battered human kingdom of Stormwind moved up to Lordaeron to ask for help. All the humans and some of the dwarves united to form the Alliance of Lordaeron. They were quickly followed by the Old Horde, which began launching naval offensives and ground attacks that led them up to Silvermoon. At that point, Zul'jin and the forest trolls came out to meet the Horde and basically tell them to stop messing up the lawn.

Doomhammer thought the trolls' hatred of the humans could be a great asset, and formally invited them to join the Horde, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. Zul'jin refused at first, but when the elves of Quel'thalas joined the Alliance, he realized that the trolls were going to be between a rock and a hard place if the Alliance won, and would probably get wiped out in the resulting clean-up operation. This opinion was confirmed when the elves captured Zul'jin. He was rescued by orcish forces, and in gratitude, he and the forest trolls joined the Old Horde. The orcs also promised the trolls their sacred ground once Quel'thalas was destroyed, which seems like a nice bonus.

Zul'jin and the trolls fought fiercely for the Horde, attacking and burning the forests of Silvermoon. Hey, that must be why they're all reddish today! Well, probably not, but it's a nice thought. This caused the elves to throw their full strength into the war effort, driving the Horde back to the Hillsbrad Foothills with much ganking and corpse-camping, and eventually to the shores of the Wetlands.

As the Alliance retook Khaz Modan and headed towards Blackrock Spire, Orgrim Doomhammer prepared a daring last stand. But it would have to be done without the trolls, because as soon as it became clear the Horde wasn't going to come out on top, the trolls did a runner back to the north. Did they think they were just going to hide until it was all over? Zul'jin was very upset by this turn of events, which meant he could never get the ancestral lands back, and he disappeared. Rumors spread that he had been killed by Alleria Windrunner or had become a mercenary. He became a hero and a symbol of hope and resistance to all the troll tribes, which is why the jungle trolls of the current Horde still say "For Zul'jin!"

Years passed, and the Horde reformed under the leadership of Thrall. The forest trolls were too savage and barbaric to join up with their Darkspear brothers in the new, clean Horde. One small, weak tribe of forest trolls, the Revantusks, did take up Thrall's offer to become part of the Horde, and they provided some clues to Zul'jin's location. He has gone missing, and all the forest trolls wait patiently for his return.

Where he is now: Zul'jin's failure in the Second War seems to have given him a renewed desire to destroy the high elves. He still leads the Amani tribe from inside the forest fortress of Zul'Aman, where he is aided by four animal loa spirits and the Hexlord Jin'zakk. It seems that he will be a killable enemy.

Wait, what? I'm a troll member of the Horde, and we revere Zul'jin! Why would we want to kill him?: Sorry, trolls, your reverence for your leader has been eclipsed by political necessity. The trolls of Zul'Aman have been attacking the blood elves of Quel'thalas, and as new members of the Horde, they're entitled to call upon Thrall for protection. Zul'jin is a member of the Old Horde, not the New Horde, so Thrall and company owe him nothing. Your worship of Zul'jin is misguided, anyway, since the forest trolls hate jungle trolls. In conclusion, find a new hero.

Fine, fine. While we're here, what's the deal with troll names?: Straight from the Warcraft RPG book: Zul is a troll prefix meaning "voodoo" or "voodoo master", and "jin" means tribal chief. Zul'Aman, Zul'Farrak, Zul'Gurub and Zul'jin are all thus named because of their roots in Voodoo, and Zul'jin, Sen'jin, and Vol'jin rhyme because they're tribal chiefs.

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The twink experience (and toggling XP)

2007-08-31T01:44:00.000-07:00

If you listened to the latest episode of Titan over on WoW Radio (and did you hear that we're teaming up with them to do a new show, starting Saturday? You did? Good), you heard Totalbiscuit and Eriyanna talk all about twinks-- alts who are created just to rule a certain battleground bracket. Most players aren't real big on twinks, and Jonaleth straight out wonders why people do it. Is it just for fun, or do the people who stay at that level just want to deal with simpler strategies and less abilities (since lower level characters don't have as many tools to play around with as higher level characters)?

The bad answer is, of course, that people just like spending gold and time to rule the battlegrounds with an enchanted, blue-geared fist. But the "good" answer is probably that yes, there's a lot of strategy in squeezing as much power you can out of a lower level character. Totalbiscuit, in the podcast, actually says that what twinks do at 19 and 29 is really what all players do at 70-- work hard on gear and enchants to get every little drop out of a character with a limited level, and that's very true.

So here's an interested idea from Brook on Garithos: how about an XP toggle, where players can actually switch off XP gain if they so choose. That would bring twinking to a whole new level, and allow players who twink to go into instances and run groups over and over again just to get the gear they want.

Predictably, players aren't thrilled with that idea-- most people have enough trouble with twinks in the BGs already for Blizzard to more or less officially sanction the practice with an official feature like that. Sure, it would definitely bring a whole new aspect to twinking. But most players, it seems, think twinking has too many aspects in the game already.

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Another class issue post gets a blue response

2007-08-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

After Druids got a blue's attention last week with a well-written class issues list, the Shaman have done the same. Danemoth of Blade's Edge server has posted a short, concise list of Shaman issues. And already got a blue response. The response was just a tag by a CM, but it shows they are listening.

Here is a summary:

1) Shaman specs outside of Restoration lack survivability.
2) No pushback resistance for Lightning Spells put a hamper on solo grinding / farming as well as in PvP.
3) Totems immobility and short range need to be buffed.
4) Other classes got new skills/spells in TBC that changed their playstyle, Shamans did not.
5) Enhancement shaman lack significant ranged combat abilities as well a way to chase down fleeing opponents.
6) Threat management is a bigger issue than ever with the TBC talents boosting shaman dps.
7) Shaman have issues handling an assist train. (When someone gets zerged by multiple opponents).
8) Lack of a way to deal with other classes' crowd control abilities put shaman at a distinct disadvantage in PvP.
9) Off-spec Shaman itemization is poor in Karazhan and beyond.
10) Flametongue and Frostbrand Weapon both scale poorly.
11) Windfury and Stormstrike demand the shaman using the slowest weapon for maximum dps gain, but that concept is counter to the weapon normalization introduced in patch 1.8.
12) Shamans need more control over their fire-and-forget Totems to direct them at a specific target or to stop them from breaking cc.
13) The large global cool down associated with dropping four Totems in combat makes it difficult for the Shaman to be responsive to changes in combat.

Read the whole list through the link. If I've misinterpreted something, list it below.

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WoW Moviewatch: Chawana's Rocket Experiment

2007-08-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is an epic tale of love lost and honor forgotten as two star crossed lovers pine for what they once had while -- I'm just kidding. It's five minutes and forty-five seconds of a L70 Orc blowing unsuspecting Alliance toons into next week with his Rocket Launcher. Over and over and over. To operatic power-metal.

Does it get any better than this? I think not.

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WoW Rookie: Money-making 101

2007-08-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Once a week, WoW Rookie attempts to bring new players useful tips and tricks on improving their game.

My first character rarely managed to keep more than a gold to her name until after she hit level 60, and I imagine the story is similar for most new players. There are plenty of skills to buy, so many professions to learn about, and always the lure of the auction house attempting to part you from your hard-earned coin. If I only knew then what I know now, mount money at 40 wouldn't have given me such grief -- instead of being frustrated over my lack of funding, I could have been frolicking through Azeroth on a brand new pony. But for new players struggling with money right now, I'm going to offer a few reasonable financial suggestions to help you on the road to your first big purchase.

Choose your professions wisely.

When you first hit level 5, you have a choice of ten primary professions. While all of them offer a variety of benefits, some of them will cost money to train up, whereas others will help you make some coin. If you're primarily interested in money-making, the best advice is to pick up two gathering professions. With a gathering profession, you needn't worry about the cost of materials for your next skill point and you have very few associated training costs. (5c to 75 skill, 5s to 150 skill, 50s to 225 skill, 5g to 300 skill, and 10g to 375 skill -- this might sound like a lot, but for a crafting profession you'll pay these same costs plus the cost of patterns or recipes needed in order to craft items. These costs are not always high, but they add up over time.)

In our recent professions overview, we went into a full discussion of all the profession options, but I'm going to keep things simple here. Your options for gathering professions (which are the only ones I advise taking if you aim to make money) are:

Mining
Skinning
Herbalism

Mining is an easy recommendation as a first profession. Because the ore you acquire through mining is used by three different crafting professions (blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting), ore and gems tend to be a big seller. There are always players attempting to raise crafting skills without the associated gathering skill, not to mention the fact that buying off the auction house is faster and easier for them than gathering.

The next profession is your call. Higher level herbs and skins both sell reasonably, but neither are as in demand as ore tends to be. (Of course, your realm's economy may vary, but this is typical.) I tend to recommend skinning as the best option, because it doesn't have an associated tracking skill like mining and herbalism. (Since you can only have one "tracking" ability active at a time, you can only be looking either for ore or herbs, but not both at once. Skinning, on the other hand, can simply be performed on any corpse which provides leather -- hunting for ore veins or flowers required.)

A final profession option to consider is enchanting. I'm not suggesting enchanting to actually enchant gear -- enchanting is both time-consuming and costly to train, which goes against the goals of our guide -- but instead to disenchant gear. The enchanting profession also allows you to disenchant magical items back to their base components: dusts, shards, and essences that are used to enchant other items. These materials sell very well, however, to disenchant higher level gear, you need higher levels of enchanting, which means you won't be able to do so without some training -- and to train it, you'll probably need to use rather than sell materials you disenchant. In my opinion, it would be a wash at best. At times, you'd be able to disenchant and sell and make a good profit from it, but eventually you'll reach a point where you need to train in order to disenchant items, which will cost you money. However, your mileage may vary.

Save everything, sell everything!

You may be tempted not to even pick up items that are useless to you, but trust me, nearly every item in the game is useful to someone. All of the game's items are color-coded to give you an idea of how important they are, and it's important to know what's what:

Grey: Boring everyday items with no special properties. These items are of no particular use to players, though some enjoy collecting full sets of grey armor (which usually has a unique look). However, even a grey item will have a value to an NPC vendor, and they're worth picking up just to resell. They may not sell for much, but those bits of coin add up!
White: These items have no special properties, either, but they are used as components in tradeskills or reagents for spells. These are certainly useful to other players, and can sell reasonably well on the auction house, depending. (And even if they don't sell like hotcakes on the AH, they can still be sold to an NPC vendor for coin.)
Green: These are uncommon items with magical properties. They'll often sell well on the auction house, though how well they sell depends on the specific stats they have. (For example, something with strength and spirit won't sell as well as something with strength and agility -- the latter stat pairing is more useful to a melee combat class, while most looking at the former will see those points in spirit as wasted itemization.)
Blue: Rare items with magical properties. These are higher quality than green items and are always worth some gold on the auction house -- at least if they aren't bind on pick-up
Purple: Epic items with magical properties. These are higher quality again than blue items and are certainly worth a good bit of gold at the auction house.
Orange: A legendary item! You aren't terribly likely to see one of these just drop from a mob...

So how do you know what's valuable and what's a waste of inventory space? I say, so long as you have inventory space to spare (and the biggest bags you can afford are always an excellent investment), you just shouldn't care about it. Fill your inventory to the brim -- you can always run back to town to sell when you're full-up. However, in the case of an inventory crisis, sacrifice grey before white, white before green, etc.

Play the auction house!

Now that your inventory is overflowing with ore and items, you need something to do with it, don't you? This is where the auction house comes in. There's an auction house where you can buy and sell goods in every major city (the town guards should be able to direct you), so whenever you have a full inventory of potentially worthwhile stuff, hit up your nearest capitol city.

The tricky part of this operation is knowing what to put items up for. It can required detailed attention to your local economy to have a concept of what anything you might pick up could be worth to others - and this is usually the daunting part that keeps people from bothering with the auction house. But help is just an addon away! For this purpose, I advise picking up Auctioneer. Auctioneer is an excellent addon that scans the auction house for you and keeps track of what everything is selling for so you don't have to. Install it and do a full scan of your local auction house every time you stop by (a full scan can take from five to ten minutes, but it's collecting invaluable information that's worth the wait). Then when you ride into town wanting to auction off a stack of random white items, Auctioneer tell you what those items usually sell for and suggest the best price. And now the seemingly worthless junk you picked up while you were out leveling is converted to gold and silver coins for your use.

Another way to play the system is to check vendors wherever you go -- some vendors around the world will offer limited quantities of crafting patterns which sometimes sell well. (The first aid books seem to do good business on all the realms I've played on, though you'll have to check prices on other patterns. Your local economy may vary.) Why would someone buy from you what they could go out and buy themselves? Well, they may not have the time or inclination to go out and find where it's sold, but if you happen across a limited quantity pattern while you're out questing, it's no loss of time to you to pick it up and resell it as soon as you hit town.

That's all I have for you today -- if you've been having money problems, give a few of these tips a try and see how they work. And if you have any of your own suggestions for new players struggling to earn their first gold, tell us about it in the comments!

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Death Knight tidbits from Neth

2007-08-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

In a silly thread in the Druid forums asking whether the druids would get a "dark form" to go along with the Death Knight being a dark version of the Paladin (which it...sort of is, I guess), US CM Nethaera dropped a few interesting pieces of DK information.

[when asked if DKs will start at level 55, instead of 60 or 70] That is the current thinking. It could still be subject to change though and is not concrete. We're still toying with ideas of how we want to make it all work. We want people to feel like they are learning not only the how's of becoming a Death Knight from the lore perspective, but also how to play one.

[More character slots?] Undetermined as of yet. We'll let people know when we know more.

[...the current feeling is that a player with any class over 55 (or whatever the level ends up being) will be able to unlock Death Knight? ] yes. That is our current thinking.

[asked about balance] It is going to be balanced against other classes and will not be able to stomp everyone else just because it's a Death Knight. Yes, they will be powerful but in their own unique way. What makes it a Hero class is that it is from Warcraft lore as a Hero class and also you will get access to it at a higher level. Any race can be a Death Knight in our current thinking as well since the path to corruption can be founded with good intentions much like what happened to Arthas.

[How many abilities will DKs start with?] Undetermined as of yet. We're still fleshing a lot of things out. This is another reason we caution people about the perception that the expansion is coming out 'too soon'. We have only shown people the tip of the iceberg and have a lot more that we are still working out and planning for. Once we have more details, we'll be sharing them so people can discuss it more and plan for the future.

So there's a lot of "not sure yet" in that post, but there's also some good information, notably that they currently think DKs will start at level 55. That's a bit lower than I would have expected. 58 or 60 would make more sense, in my opinion, in order to be able to start out in Outland (but then again, does that make sense lore-wise?). So how excited are you about Death Knights? Are they your main reason to buy Wrath? The change that will kill WoW?

[thanks, Natulcien]

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Arena season 1 set to be purchasable with honor

2007-08-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

Apparently, this was mentioned at BlizzCon, but even reading all the marvelous coverage of BlizzCon here at WoW Insider, I managed to miss it. Drysc tells us that "as arena sets fall off they would make their way to the honor system. So when a season 3 set is released, season 1 would fall off the arena vendors and onto the honor vendors, but this may not include weapons."

So! Have you been hoarding up your honor points for that one great day when you'd be able to buy something epic with them? Are you prepared for hours and hours of hanging out in battlegrounds in order to get your desired set without having to do well in the arenas? If your answer to any of those questions is yes, you may be in luck. No official word on when Season three will come along however.

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Death Knights' "rune" system might take some skill

2007-08-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

"Oh my frikkin dog, everybody and their second cousin is gonna wanna be Death Knights!" was the cry heard throughout Outland when the new Hero Class was announced. WoW players everywhere had visions of dungeons and raids filled with only Death Knights; as well as Alliance and Horde cities alike all filled wall-to-wall with thousands of players who abandoned their original class to become Death Knights, only to discover (along with rogues and hunters) that it ain't so easy being uber-cool and powerful when everyone else is uber-cool and powerful too -- because everyone else is taking your raid spot.

Well Drysc has a ray of light to shed on this despair... or, in the case of Death Knights, perhaps that should be a big tank of unholy frozen blood to spill on it (assuming that would help):

I expect just about everyone is going to want to try one, but is everyone going to want to drop their long-time proffered class for one? I seriously doubt it. Also there's some amount of self regulation that will really be required to keep group composition equalized.

Not only will the other 9 classes still be needed to succeed in any group effort, but the tactics involved in playing a Death Knight might be too hard for the average Stanley Noobsauce to master. In response to one player who felt that the rune system Death Knights will be using seemed "clunky and not fun," Drysc responded:

In its current design, at least as far as I've seen, it's like having three different energy pools that can be made smaller or bigger before each fight for what you think you may need. I would kind of also liken it to some systems used in space sims where you throw more power into your shields, weapons, hull, etc. While the rune system is designed to be a pre-combat setup, there's the possibility of there being some on-the-fly swapping abilities for re-proportioning your rune distribution.

It's definitely going to be more complex. I think there's going to be a clear definition (more so than other classes) of a good death knight player that manages and controls their runes and cooldowns well, and someone who doesn't.

So the official word is that Death Knights won't be able to do everything by themselves, and may in fact be pretty hard to play. Is this enough to allay fears of Death Knight overpopulation? Will we still have to hire Death Knight exterminators from the opposite faction to clear out our own cities?

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The joy of grinding

2007-08-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

I've never cared for grinding, myself. I just can't do it. I'm easily distracted and I quickly get bored of repetitive tasks. (Don't ask me how I ever managed to kill enough Furbolg to pick up that +15 agiity enchant from the Timbermaw way back when -- I'm really not sure how I managed to kill that many of the same creature in a row without starting to tear out my hair.) However, some people relish in the grinding game, like our own BigRedKitty's friend TJ. BRK seems to have an ongoing challenge with TJ to complete some of the toughest grinds in the game. After conquoring the firefly pet they've moved on to the Wintersaber mount. I've got to say -- I tried that grind for about a day before moving on with my life. However, I have no doubt that TJ will rise to the challenge, because after picking up that firefly, this is nuthin'. What about all of you? Are you grinders who would find these challenges no problem -- or more like me, who wouldn't last seconds?

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make money in lowbie instance (Warcraft guilds)

2007-08-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

You could probably make a little more if you are alliance, but should be easy with either. Having skinning will make it go a lot faster too, I would think you would need to be level 35+. You will need someone with at least level 10 and 115 leatherworking too, you could make a mule yourself easily and get that skill level.

Rest is pretty simple, head over to Wailing Caverns do the quest send receipe to the mule then grind the instance, collect 10 perfect deviate scales and 10 deviate scales, send to leatherworking mule, make belt and sell to rich rogue twinks for anything from 20-50g. Reset instance and repeat, good thing is you will never run into the instance limit as will take you longer than 12 mins to complete it

I've never seen these for sale on the alliance AH. I saw a twink the other day, theres even a few guilds of them with all the blue stuff (barb, lynx, blackened) but he didn't have this belt so hopefully theres a market for them.

I wasn't there for long but picked up 3 perfect and 7 deviate, bags got full though, alot of lvl 11-12 greens dropped that I sold, not a great deal of money in it though. I didn't find the quest guy but apparently theres a vendor near him so that good for unloading junk, trouble with skinning you have to loot everything.

Of course only list one at a time, also if you get close to 50g (don't know how possible this is!) for one belt I would imagine other ppl will start grinding for them, in that respect I don't know when the best time to list them would be?

Nearest base for horde is obviously Crossroads, easy for them to send stuff off or sell, nearest mailbox for alliance seems to be astranaar? Feel free to add anything to increase profits! (may be worth picking up enchanting to de stuff, probably for horde as base close and can send off dusts) Ready for the next level? We recommend The MMORPG Exchange for your WoW Gold needs. MMORPG-Exchange has supplied us for years and has great customer service and 24/7 instant delivery. Check them out! World of Warcraft Gold delivered instantly!

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Tempest Keep and SSC loots buffed on PTR

2007-08-28T23:27:00.000-07:00

According to our friends at MMO-Champion, several items that drop in Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Caverns have been upgraded on the PTR. In addition, there's apparently a new shield added to the loot table in either Mount Hyjal or Black Temple based on its item level. Speculation abounds as to whether this is the first of many new items or not.

I personally have no idea if this is being done to balance TK and SSC with Arena Season 3, if this means that Season 3 is coming with the patch or not, and what that means as to how good Season 3 items will be. None of the upgrades is so enormous as to make or break having a weapon, but they are nice little bumps if you happen to already have, say, World Breaker or the Twinblade of the Phoenix.

Void Reaver over there is just thrilled that his loots are getting a boost. Look at how happy he is. That great big smile in no way is caused by panic at hordes (or alliances) of adventurers coming to crack him open for the succulent treats inside.

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WoW Moviewatch: MMOvie

2007-08-28T23:24:00.001-07:00

Originally, I thought this trailer was just a joke, but no-- it's real. Someone out there (from a site named Voig.com, apparently) is actually going to put together a feature length film featuring scenes from famous films redone in the World of Warcraft. Crazy.

That link above goes to an interview with the directors, where they talk about filming on a PvP server (why would you do that?), getting the costumes to match up just right, and the fact that it took 100 hours of capture, and "weeks and weeks" for their editor to get the whole thing done. Other than the interview, there's surprisingly little news going around about the movie-- no release date yet, and to be honest, I'm still not completely sure there is a full length movie, as the only note about that is in the small excerpt on the front page. At any rate, the trailer looks pretty sweet-- maybe we'll get to see more eventually.

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Trick taming in Shadowmoon Village

2007-08-28T23:18:00.000-07:00

Pretty funny-- Mania's Arcania issued a challenge to Alliance Hunters a few days ago to do something that might be impossible: tame the Shadowmoon Village stablemaster's pet wolf, Detrafila. The wolf is level 60, and according to Beast Lore, is actually tameable. But he's also surrounded by level 70 Horde, of course, so taming is not easy. Plus, some "pets" of NPCs are actually summoned pets, and therefore not tameable.

But two Hunters were able to pull it off. Dezar on Black Dragonflight and Gettokiwi on Stormreaver were both able to kite the stablemaster away from Shadowmoon Village, take him out, and then tame the wolf after he'd dropped. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the wolf doesn't have a special, identifiable look, and he doesn't actually come with any abilities, so there's not much reason to do it except for the experience.

But it would be exceedingly cool for Blizzard to "hide" special tameable pets like this for expert Hunters to go after. I know there are a few other "special" tames around-- Spot in Menethil Harbor is one, as is Stanley, the dog the Horde poisons in Hillsbrad. But it would be cool to see a few more secret, more select tames for Hunters in Northrend. What d'ya say, Blizz?

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Pet Wars and other minigame ideas

2007-08-28T23:13:00.000-07:00

If the response to new hairstyles at BlizzCon means anything to the developers (Frank Pierce told me that he almost didn't even bother mentioning the new hairstyles at the keynote, and was amazed that it got one of the biggest cheers), it's that you can't ignore the little changes. New raid bosses, and bigtime lore storylines are cool, but sometimes people just want to relax and have a little fun with their characters.

So Karvoth has a great idea: turn noncombat pets into combat pets (of a sort), and make them into a fun little minigame. Just like the Tonk wars (and doggone it, if anyone on Thunderhorn's Horde side has a Tonk left, come see my Shaman, because he has one and no one to fight with!), setting up a little mode for dueling minipets would create endless fun, and fill in all those hours of group waiting and guild setup pretty easily.

Of course, that's not the only game they could implement-- ever since the Darkmoon cards were implemented, I always thought it would be awesome to have an ingame card game. I probably doubled my time playing FFIX just because of Tetra Master, and putting a simple but addictive card game inside of WoW would give me a whole new reason to play even more.

Unfortunately, neither of these ideas are likely, because Blizzard has made it pretty clear with WotLK that WoW is some serious high-level business. But just like the new hairstyles, players will always jump at the chance to have more simple fun with all the time they spend in Azeroth.

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Addon Spotlight: Feed-O-Matic

2007-08-28T23:03:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to write about this "so soon" after discussing Trackmenu, but after The Blog King presented appetizer and entree courses on hunter management, I thought this add-on would make the perfect dessert helping. The cheesecake, if you will. (Cherry cheesecake, of course.)

Our friend Gazmik Fizzwidget is a goblin of many talents, and unlike most goblins, his inventions do not tend to blow up. As I said, I spoke about Trackmenu not too long ago, but he has also created an excellent add-on to aid in the sometimes arduous task of keeping your pet fed. Keeping your pet fed is important because, after all, if it's happiness drops too low for an extended period of time, the pet will desert you. Hunters who have invested an extended amount of time and money into their pets will tell you that losing your pet is a bad thing. Re-training from scratch is not a pleasant experience, especially if you acquired a rare pet at a low level that you're particularly fond of.

So what exactly are you to do to keep your pet happy? With the default user interface, you are forced to continually monitor that tiny little tri-colour box beside your pet's unit frame (that I swear looks like a coffee cup) and click the feed icon, and then click the food. It's time consuming, repetitive, and tedious.

Our friend Gazmik has written another gem called Feed-O-Matic that makes feeding your pet so gleefully simple it's the next best thing to total automation! Installation is simple and typical of most add-ons. Probably the most difficult thing is choosing a key to bind to the pet feeding process in the Feed-O-Matic configuration window. Once you have defined your key, Feed-O-Matic will intelligently monitor the contents of your inventory and only feed your pet the food that your pet likes, each time you press the feeding key. It will choose foods in the order of your pet's preference. So if one food will give a higher happiness yield, it will use that up first before moving to the next type. It will also optionally ignore food items that are cooking or quest items. It can also be set to consume "shorter" stacks first to maximize your bag space, although this is less of an issue since the recent changes to the stacking mechanism. Lastly, (and this is perhaps my favourite feature) it can even be set to make your pet growl audibly when it's hungry so you don't have to watch the happiness monitor at all!

I don't know Gazmik personally, and I wouldn't normally review two add-ons from the same person in such rapid succession, but it just seemed like a perfect topical flow today. Remember: He's got what you need!

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Atiesh and the new Naxx

2007-08-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

Considering that Kel'Thuzad is basically "the boss of shipping WoW" (according to Metzen at BlizzCon), then Atiesh, the Legendary caster item that once belonged to Medivh, is the greatest item in levels 1-60. But we're at level 70 now, and when we get to level 80, Atiesh, a Legendary item, might end up looking more like a stick than anything else. So Asheen asks, knowing that Naxx is set to be "repurposed" for our trip to Northrend: will Atiesh make a return?

It's a cool idea. Bornakk says, "Maybe." There are a few tangles in the plan: currently, Atiesh requires a trip to C'thun in AQ to get the base (I believe because Brann Bronzebeard put it there), which is a 40 man raid that most guilds don't want to bother with. And of course the stats would need some updating-- it's a nice staff, but not exactly a Legendary level 80 any more. And finally, the staff provides a portal to Karazhan, and at level 80, will that really be as amazing as it used to be?

Bornakk also says the lore needs to be set in place, but that's a copout-- Blizzard can do whatever they want (what if the Kirin Tor decided to repurpose Atiesh and combined it with a new base that didn't need to come from AQ40?). But the biggest issue with bringing back Atiesh is that there's so many other good items that could just replace it. Medivh's staff is hardly the most important item in the game any more, and as Bornakk points out, even though Medivh had great power, it didn't necessarily all come from his staff.

I can't wait to see Naxx's new purpose in WotLK, but there are too many old items floating around for Blizzard to worry about updating. I'd rather see new legendaries, and maybe even some artifacts, come out of the new Naxx and Northrend.

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Shifting Perspectives: Awesome Moonkin gear and how to get it easily

2007-08-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by David Bowers and Dan O'Halloran.

My druid column co-writer, David Bowers, posted a list of easily obtainable feral tanking gear. He did such a great job, I'm stealing his idea. Except I'm going to focus on easily obtainable gear for Moonkin druids. So that makes it not stealing, right?

I want to define "easy to get". I mean non-raid. Either outdoor questing, 5 man grouping or crafting. Also, this listing is extensive, so I'm only covering half the available equipment slots today and will finish up the remaining slots in two weeks. And after that, I'll cover restoration gear.

On to the good stuff!

Every item listed that drops from a quest will have an Alliance and/or Horde quest link. If you don't see an A or H after the stats, then your faction can't get the item.

Chest: Sacred Feather Vest (15 sta, 13 int, 10 spi, 14 crit, 42 dmg) [A H] is the reward from an easy L58 solo chain out of Hellfire Peninsula that can net you a chest piece you won't be replacing for quite a while. If you already did this quest and chose a different reward, you can snag a L60 Omenai Vest (28 sta, 19 int, 22 dmg, 8 mp5) [A] quest chain out of the Temple of Telhemat in Hellfire. Alternatives at higher levels: a L67 Nether Vest (28 int, 17 crit, 34 dmg) [A/H] out of Netherstorm or pick up L68 Grom'tor's Friend's Cousin's Tunic (15 sta, 21 int, 46 dmg) [A/H] which is the 11th step in a very long chain that gets you attuned for Tempest Keep and Mt. Hyjal.

If you are Leatherworker, you've hit the jackpot for once. The L65 Living Crystal Breastplate (23 int, 17 spi, 29 dmg, 55 heal) isn't bad if you're pulling double duty with healing and dps'ing, but then there's the L70 Windhawk Hauberk (24 sta, 25 int, 25 spi, [BS YS BS: 4 agi], 16 crit, 28 dmg, 35 heal). It's the best non-raid chest piece in the game for Balance druids. Only craftable by Tribal Leatherworkers and not tradable. Finally makes Leatherworking look like a viable profession.

As for instance drops, keep an eye out for the L63 Tunic of the Nightwatcher (27 sta, 21 int, 18 spi, [RS YS BS: 2 mp5], 26 dmg) from Swamplord Musel'ek in The Underbog (17.5% drop) or the L70 Starry Robes of the Crescent (23 sta, 30 int, 24 spi, 19 crit, 39 dmg) from Pandemonious in Mana-Tombs (12% drop.)

Legs: Nature-stitched Kilt (19 sta, 19 int, 12 spi, 23 dmg) [A H] are from another easy to pick up quest in Hellfire Peninsula. You cab grab them as early as L58 if you want. You can also pick up Explorer's Leggings (23 int, 22 spi, 26 dmg) [A/H] from an escort quest in Zangarmarsh at L60, Leggings of the Third Coin (34 sta, 26 int, 12 crit, 32 dmg, 4 mp5) [A/H] from a L64 quest that starts in Auchidoun (Terokkar Forest) and ends in Auchenai Crypts or Leggings of Concentrated Power (34 sta, 23 int, 23 spi, 27 dmg) [A/H] in Netherstorm at L67.

On the kill them and loot them side, Moonchild Leggings (26 sta, 20 int, 19 spi, [RS YS YS: 2 mp5], 21 crit, 23 dmg) drop from Boggrok in Heroic Blood Furnace (16% drop, req L70).

After the Nature-stiched Kilt, you may just want to hold out for Haramad's Leggings of the Third Coin (29 int, [YS YS RS: 5 dmg], 16 crit, 27 dmg) [A/H]. They are easily obtainable from a quest that asks to kill the end boss in the Mana-Tombs, which you are going to do anyway. And this nets you the 3rd best pants in the game for Balance druids at L64.

Then there are the leggings that beat even raid level pants. The Alliance version is the Kurenai Kilt (11 int, [RS YS YS: 2 mp5], 18 crit, 44 dmg) and can be obtained from gaining Revered with the Kurenai. The Horde version is Tempest Leggings (11 int, [RS YS YS: 2 mp5], 18 crit, 44 dmg) and has the exact same stats, but is obtained from getting Revered with the Mag'har.

Helm: Moonkin Headdress (30 sta, 20 int, 20 spi, 19 crit, 23 dmg) [A H] is a good one to get off the bat. Head into Hellfire Ramparts. An Ominous Letter has a 33% to drop off the final boss. From there you can turn the letter in and get the quest for this helm. Head into The Blood Furnace to collect the drops.

There isn't much after that until the higher levels, then you have a number of options. Quest rewards include Circlet of the Starcaller (27 sta, 18 int, 17 spi, 18 crit, 47 dmg) [A/H] from a L70 Elite quest out of the Netherstorm that may be done solo by some classes and Mooncrest Headdress (16 int, 21 crit, 44 dmg) [A H] from the fifth of seven quests in a L69 Shadowmoon Valley chain.

Other high level options include Moon-Crown Antlers (25 sta, 31 int, 20 spi, 16 hit, 40 dmg) from Captain Skarloc in Heroic CoT: Old Hillsbrad Foothills (10% drop, req L70) and L66 Exorcist's Wyrmhide Helm - (35 sta, 16 int, [MS: 2 dmg], 10 res, 34 dmg) that costs 18 spirit shards from either Alliance-based Spirit Sage Zran and Horde-based Spirit Sage Gartok. With its high resilience and armor, it may only appeal to Balance Druids that like to off tank or main tank. Spirit Shards drop from bosses in Auchidoun instances while your faction controls the PvP objectives in Terokkar.

You can also hit the Auction House or your guild crafters for L69 Tailoring: Stylin' Jungle Hat (24 str, 24 agi, 24 sta, 24 int, 10 mp5, 19 dmg) or the most awesome L70 Windscale Hood (16 sta, 18 int, 35 crit, 41 dmg, 14 mp5) which will cost someone a Primal Nether.

At the end of the day, the best non-raid Balance helm currently in the game is Druidic Helm of Second Sight (12 sta, 15 int, [YS BS BS: 5 dmg], 24 crit, 35 dmg, 4 mp5) [A H]. Alliance and Horde have different routes in this chain, but end up with same sweet reward.

Shoulders: The earliest TBC Balance shoulders you can get are Elekk Hide Spaulders (12 int, 16 spi, 28 crit, 25 dmg) [A/H] from a L63 quest out of Terokkar. After that you can either pick up Netherfused Pauldrons (21 sta, 23 int, 20 spi, 28 dmg) [A/H] from a L67 elite chain in Netherstorm or the Lunar-Claw Pauldrons (23 sta, 26 int, 17 spi, 29 dmg) that drop from Mechano Lord Capacitus in The Mechanar (either Normal or Heroic mode, 16% drop, L70).

If you don't mind the lack of STA and low INT, the Elekk Hide Spaulders may be the way to go with it's high crit and spell damage until the next expansion.

Bracers: The first bracers you can get out of Outlands come from Zangarmarsh at level 60. Alliance toons get Explorer's Bands (12 int, 12 spi, 14dmg) [A] and the identical Horde counterpart are Bog Walker's Bands (12 int, 12 spi, 14dmg) [H]. The only other early option is Moonstruck Bands (16 sta, 11 int, 11 spi, 13 dmg) [A/H] from a L62 one step quest to kill an easy solo mob in Terokkar.

At higher levels, available upgrades are either Mana Infused Wristguards (12 sta, 8 int, 7 spi, 25 dmg) [A/H] from a L67 Netherstorm quest that has a few prereqs or Moon-Touched Bands (17 sta, 20 int, 12 spi, 21 dmg) that drop from The Maker in Heroic Blood Furnace (15% drop, req L70.)

The last option are the best bracers in the game (including current raid drops). It's the L70 Tribal Leatherworking only Windhawk Bracers (21 sta, 16 int, 6 spi, [YS: 2 agi], 14 crit, 15 dmg, 29 heal). Almost makes me want to take up Leatherworking again to be able to wear these. Almost...

Gloves: Early on there are quite a few options to run with. You can have L61 Wild Dreanish Gloves (13 agi, 13 str, 18 sta, 12 int, 14 dmg) made for you by a Leatherworker or quest for either L63 Gloves of the Afterlife (18 int, 17 spi, 21 dmg) [A/H] in Terrokar or L64 Clefthoof Gloves (24 sta, 16 int, 16 spi, 19 dmg) [A/H] by killing a gazillion Clefthoofs, then go kill some more. And then go kill the king of the dung droppers.

In mid-levels, you can look forward to Miner's Gloves (10 int, 15 spi, 30 dmg) [A] at L65 in the Blade's Edge, Nether-Rocket Gloves (16 sta, 11 int, 10 spi, 33 dmg) [A/H] at L67 in Netherstorm, L65 Netherhide Gloves (11 int, 16 spi, 33 dmg) [H] out of Blade's Edge if you can kill a L68 non-elite dragon or L67 Harmony's Touch (18 sta, 16 crit, 33 dmg) [A/H] from a Netherstorm three step quest.

At L70 there's Grips of the Lunar Eclipse (23 sta, 25 int, 18 spi, 28 dmg) Lieutenant Drake, Heroic Old Hillsbrad 12% drop L70.

However the second best gloves in the game have a 1 in 5 chance to drop from Hungrafen in The Underbog and you can wear them at level 63: Starlight Gauntlets (10 sta, 21 int, 8 spi, [BS BS: 5 dmg], 25 dmg). If you get a pair of these early on, like I did, you won't have to worry about this slot until the expansion hits.

End Notes: If you have a gap in your armor and can't get the next upgrade, you can always hit the AH and do a search for "of the invoker" or "of the sorcerer" leather. Good fill-in armor for cheap.

Much of this information was culled from this phenomenal thread on BC Balance Loot on the official forums. Check it out if want to learn more about balancing +hit, +spelldamage and +crit gear. There is also a great Balance FAQ starting with post fourteen.

This is it for today. In two weeks I'll be back with listings for the remaining slots. And after that, I'll cover restoration druids.

I'm sure I might have missed a piece or two. If you have any recommendations, be sure to list them below.

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Enchanting tweaks on the PTRs

2007-08-28T22:17:00.000-07:00

World of Raids has pointed out some lowered enchanting costs that are showing up on the latest build of the public test realms. However, changes at present only seem to apply to enchanter-only ring enchants (if you're not familiar, these enchants soulbind the item when enchanted, so they're only useful to enchanters), so if you aren't an enchanter, the following is probably of no interest. However, if you are an enchanter, happy days! The cost of enchanting your rings seems to be dropping significantly in the next patch. For precise details on the current and future costs, read on!

[Thanks, Akyl]

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World of Warcraft graffiti in China

2007-08-28T22:13:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure this isn't a Blizzard PR stunt (if so, I think they would be well-advised to pick a more populated area) but instead the work of a fan, adorning this graffiti-covered wall with an image of a Troll Shaman. While it's beyond my abilities to translate what's being said (and Babelfish doesn't have a good grasp of Chinese, though for the easily amused, it provides a variety of interesting phrases if you ask it to translate for you), you can snag a couple of higher resolution screenshots here. This is the first example of World of Warcraft graffiti that I've seen, but with a game this popular, it don't think it will be the last.

[Via The Ironic Gamer]

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The Light and How to Swing It: Paladin macros

2007-08-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

So recently, I decided to respec ret and give the most-vilified spec in WoW a swing while I leveled. I used the popular Seal/Judge Crusader, Seal of Command, Judge Command, Crusader Strike combo. But I kept forgetting to instantly re-seal Command after Judging, and as a result, I was pretty slow to kill things. I decided it was time to make a macro.

Now, I've used macros before on my rogue (usually involving pickpocketing when cheapshotting), but I had yet to make any for my pally. So I did a Google search and lo and behold, there were a ton of good paladin macro sites! These will be old hat for any experienced macroers, but for noobs like me, I figured a list would come in handy.

Macros for all!

Bubble-hearthing:
/castsequence reset=3600 Divine Shield, Hearthstone.
Crusader Aura with Flying Mount: This will cast Crusader Aura and mount you if you're unmounted, and cast Retribution Aura and unmount you if you're mounted. Replace the name of the mount and the aura as needed. (Note: This doesn't work with the pally ground mount, since it shares a global cooldown with the auras.)
/cast [nocombat, nomounted] Crusader Aura; [mounted] Retribution Aura;
/stopcasting
/cast [nocombat, nomounted] Blue Windrider;
/dismount
Smart Consecration: This macro casts Rank 1 Consecration when you're out of combat and need to find a rogue, and your max rank of Consecration when you're in-combat.
/cast [nocombat] Consecration(Rank 1); Consecration

Damage/Seal macros:

Easy Judge: A simple macro that judges your current seal and then recasts a seal of your choice.
/cast Judgment
/stopcasting
/cast Seal of Command
Advanced Seal and Judge: Like the above, except you don't have to wait for a seal to be active first. Replace Seal of Command with whatever you feel like using.
/castsequence reset=30 Seal of Command, [harm] Judgement
Quick Judge: This works well for if you want to dart in and judge Wisdom or Light before stepping back to heal.
#showtooltip
/castsequence [harm] reset=target/shift Seal of Light, Judgement
Crusader/Damage Seal: Okay, for this one you've got to press the shift key first to seal and judge Crusader, then you click it again to automatically seal Command if you have a two-hander and Righteousness if you have a one-hander.
/castsequence [modifier:shift] reset=30,target/combat Seal of the Crusader, Judgement;[equipped:Shields] reset=30 Seal of Righteousness, Judgement;[equipped:Two-Handed Swords/Two-Handed Maces/Two-Handed Axes/Polearms] reset=30 Seal of Command, Judgement
Ret Spam Macro for Long Fights: This is a spam macro for retadins, which means you just hit it over and over and over again if you find pressing three different buttons intellectually taxing. I'm honestly not sure how well this one works, so test it out!
/castsequence reset=target Crusader Strike,Seal of Command,Judgement,Seal of Command,Judgement,Seal of Command,Crusader Strike,Judgement,Seal of Command,Judgement,Seal of Command,Crusader Strike,Judgement,Seal of Command,Judgement,Seal of Command

Healing/Blessing macros:

Blessing: You can press shift to do a Greater Blessing or just click the button for a single-target Blessing.
/cast [modifier:shift] Greater Blessing of Might; Blessing of Might
Divine Light: Make sure your next heal is a crit! Replace Holy Light with Flash of Light or Holy Shock if you want.
/cast [combat] Divine Favor
/stopcasting
/cast [help] Holy Light; [target=targettarget] Holy Light
Bubble Heal: You too can be annoying in battlegrounds!
/castsequence reset=300 Divine Shield, [target=player] Holy Light
Rez Macro: Announces who you're rezzing, so that you don't cross-rez with shamans or someone,
/cast Redemption
/stopmacro [nodead]
/script local C; if(GetNumRaidMembers()>0) then C = "RAID" elseif(GetNumPartyMembers()>0) then C = "PARTY" else C = "SAY" end SendChatMessage("Resurrecting %t.", C)

Tanking macros:

Righteous Defense Cheese: This basically turns your Righteous Defense into a taunt by casting it on the target of your target (meaning you can have the boss targeted.)
/cast [help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget] Righteous Defense
Blessing of Protection Cheese: Another cheesy taunt-kinda thing which BoPs your target's target (hopefully shifting aggro to you.)
/cast [help,target=target] Blessing of Protection; [target=targettarget,help] Blessing of Protection

I haven't checked out all of these macros myself. Instead, I got them from a number of fine macro sites, including World of Raids, WoWWiki, and the pally forums. Do these macros work for you? What macros do you find necessary to your life as a pally?

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Two Bosses Enter: Prince Malchezaar vs. Hakkar the Soulflayer

2007-08-27T00:02:00.000-07:00

Two bosses enter... but only one will get to leave in our series of fantasy deathmatches. Over at WoW Insider HQ, we've selected some of the most dangerous bosses to be found in the World of Warcraft today, and now we're pitting them against one another in a fight to the death where only one can be champion. And the best part of all this fun? You get to pick our winner! That's right -- after reading up on each boss, your votes and comments will determine who goes on to the next round and whose lifeless body gets a victory screenshot.

This week we're looking at Prince Malchezaar from Karazhan and Hakkar the Soulflayer from Zul'Gurub -- and before you balk that Karazhan and its inhabitants are much more difficult than those in the lower-level Zul'Gurub, I must remind you that the rules of our little game mean we attempt to consider these bosses on equal footing. That means they're both going into this fight with approximately the same level, health, and damage ability -- what we're debating here is how they fight, not which one has the most hit points.

If we've piqued your interest, keep reading for a rundown of each bosses' mad fighting skillz!

Heavy shadow and melee damage aren't Malchezaar's only trick -- he also summons infernals to aid him in combat. When these land, they cast a wide-range fire-based AOE attack and once Malchezaar is below 30% health, they're summoned frequently, and will overwhelm a standard player raid in a couple of minutes. Malchezaar's abilities are summed up as follows:

A Shadow Word: Pain DoT
A Shadow Nova shadow damage AoE with knockback
Infernals summoned with a fire AoE
Higher melee damage when under 60% health, when he summons axes to fight with (when using these he can Thrash to gain additional attacks and Cleave to hit multiple targets)
Flying axes when under 30% health which randomly attack targets

Anyone experienced with the Prince Malchezaar fight will notice that I've left out a major portion of it -- Enfeeble. During a standard fight, Malchezaar will randomly cast Enfeeble on five raid members, reducing their maximum health to 1 and preventing all healing and health regeneration. This is tricky, because it means these raid members have to carefully position themselves out of range of Shadow Novas and Infernal drops. However, Malchezaar will never cast Enfeeble on the main tank, and since this fight is a one on one, with Hakkar essentially acting as the main tank, Enfeeble shouldn't come into play.

For those of you who want all of the gory details on Prince Malchezaar's abilities, WoWWiki is the place to check.

For players, Hakkar is a gimmick fight. If you know the trick to the fight, the execution is simple -- but if you don't know the trick, you'll never beat him. For his abilities, we're going to presume that he's on his own, without any support from his priests or priestesses, which leaves a simple fight for us to consider. Hakkar brings down his opponents with the following abilities:

Corrupted Blood, a shadow damage DoT
Blood Siphon, a channeled spell that stuns the target, does damage, and heals Hakkar for about five times the damage done. Hakkar casts this like clockwork every 90 seconds. (For player raids, the trick is to get poisoned by nearby mobs -- then Hakkar's Blood Siphon will siphon the poison and damage him instead of healing him. Without this, he simply heals too much to be killable.)
Enrage: after 10 minutes, Hakkar will enrage, greatly increasing his damage output

Hakkar also has two different mind control abilities, but these would both be rather pointless in a one on one situation. This should tell you what you need to know for our purposes, but for the complete details of the Hakkar fight, check out WoWWiki.

Now comes the time you've all been waiting for -- time to vote! However, before you make your decision, I'd like to remind you again that we're trying to consider these bosses with approximately the same level, health, and damage output. So don't just say Karazahn is higher level than Zul'gurub and be done with it, but instead think about what might happen if these two actually encountered one another with reason to fight.

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WoW Moviewatch: 10 Paladins clear Karazhan (almost!)

2007-08-26T23:51:00.000-07:00

We've profiled movies of a Paladin soloing Blackrock Depths. We've even seen one solo Blood Furnace. Now, ten of them have banded together to tackle Karazhan. And they manage to clear it all the way until the last two bosses, Nightbane and Netherspite. Not bad for a class that constantly beats up on itself for being gimped.

The video is 26 minutes long, but enjoyable. The first part is RP related to the quest and the fights are at double speed. The music choice is very good IMHO and the humorous moments really help move it along. The shot of all 10 Blood Elf paladins dancing naked on the table was definitely a highlight. These are 10 players definitely enjoying themselves. Check it out.

thanks for wow video,wow movie

Totem Talk: Hi, I'm a Shaman. Take me to your instance.

2007-08-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Totem Talk is the column for Shaman players. Matthew Rossi plays a Shaman. It's like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup except with less peanut butter and chocolate and more talking about Shaman issues. According to WoWwiki, the correct plural of Shaman is Shamans. This seems weird to me, but I guess they should know, they're a Wiki.

Well, we could spend a lot of time messing about, but this week we have already seen that Shamans have issues. The comment thread this generated is very long and very rancorous. To be honest, that's the way the Shaman forums gets sometimes, too. Being the proud papa of two shammies, a level 70 resto on the Horde side and a level 44 enhancement on Alliance, I feel like I should say that I really love the class. It's fun and engaging. I leveled as Elemental to 50, Enhancement from 50 to 70, and specced Restoration for my guild, which of course means that the only mail that drops is Enhancement or Elemental. My healing kit? Way too many Elemental pieces I've socketed to try and make up the difference. But ultimately, I love my Shamans and I love playing them.

And yes, the angry Shaman players are right. There are problems with the Shaman.

Part of the problem is scalability. We all remember back before The Burning Crusade launched when a properly geared and specced Enhancement shaman could rip people's faces off. Hell, I used to take my warrior into BG's and get Windfury-laden Sulfuras shots that would annihilate me. I remember the resentment folks Alliance side felt about Shamans.

That time is long past. Between 60 and 70, shaman don't scale as well as the other classes. Gear can make up some of this difference... I defy you to fight an Elemental shaman in full T5 and say he doesn't do significant damage... but especially for the Enhancement tree, the DPS you can put out just doesn't scale with the stamina on items out there. A properly geared shaman with a good set of weapons (most seem to like slow main hands, trying to get around the hidden three second cooldown on Windfury) can still do really nice burst damage, but it's hardly as overwhelming as it once seemed. When I was enhance I preferred a 2h, to be honest, as it's much easier to find a 2h weapon that will be slow enough to avoid the 3 second cooldown and its damage draining effect. But dual wield is still most likely superior for enhance DPS.

Elemental is still the best sustained damage tree for a shaman, but it is also the most likely to run out of mana, especially with recent changes to Elemental Focus. I understand that people were using Rank 1 lightning bolts to proc their clearcasting state and then popping out their biggest damage spells while they were free... but to be honest, I don't get why that was a problem. Still, much less likely to happen now.

In the end you have two trees that aren't as desirable and take more skill and gear to perform well and one tree that gets instance invites. I'm sure there are Enhancement and Elemental shamans out there who are getting into PuG's, or being brought on runs by smart guildies who enjoy the combination of shaman abilities and the powerful buffs of their totems. In PvP, a resto shaman can make him or herself practically unkillable by certain players with the right totems and studious application of Earth Shield. I've personally killed warriors by just dropping Searing Totem, Healing Stream and throwing Earth Shield on myself over and over again, but it's a long, slow grind and it counts on him not getting any help, not getting a few good crits in a row with Mortal Strike to cut my healing in half, and most of all not killing my totems over and over again with area effect attacks like Whirlwind. (He would have to target the totem, hit WW and then switch back to me, but that's not especially hard to do.) Elemental might well be the best PvP spec for shamans, I wouldn't know because I haven't had the gear to really try it out, but Enhancement is definitely not. So what does that leave the typical Enhancement shaman to do?

Instances. Enhancement shamans are trying to get an instance run, basically, and they're trying to do it by convincing groups that their buffing ability via totems is as good or better than bringing another DPSer who can sap, sheep, seduce, banish or trap, and who will probably be capable of significantly outdamaging the shaman without pulling aggro. (Rogues, Mages, Warlocks and Hunters all have aggro control far superior to a shaman, as well. Granted, warlock aggro control consists of having a specific pet out and managing Curse of Recklessness, Curse of Agony and Fear.) These are all problems Elemental shamans will face as well. A DPS class without aggro control and without crowd control needs something to counterbalance those deficits, and in the case of shamans the attraction is supposed to be buffs.

Why, then, doesn't it seem to be working? Why are shamans the least played class overall, less popular than paladins on Horde side, and by far the least played Alliance class? It's understandable to some extent on Alliance side, as only one race can play them there, but three out of five Horde races can play shamans and yet only druids, who are only playable by one race, are less represented there. And both shaman and druid are playable by one race in the Alliance, so that doesn't even hold true there. Is it just that it's a new class to them? If that were all, wouldn't paladins be as rare Horde side? This is clearly not the case.

To my mind, the real issue is totems. Totems provide the best buffs in the game, and four of them can be down at once, buffing strength, agility, healing or mana regen, granting windfury, flametongue, an AoE fire totem... totems are versatile and the hallmark of the class. But as so many have point out, totems are on the global cooldown, meaning that it takes valuable seconds to cast them. Totems are mana intensive, meaning that a shaman may have to stop and drink after dropping them. Totems are short duration, lasting at the most two minutes for the most part, and have no timer to tell the shaman when they will expire. Unless you keep an egg timer or a stopwatch handy, the first you'll know your mana spring totem is expiring is when it expires. Totems don't move, meaning that they have to be dropped within range of the players you intend to buff with them. Some of these factors are essential for shamans to retain their unique flavor... I don't think I'd want totems to float around me... but some are ridiculous holdovers from an earlier time that have been superseded by changes in the game. The duration of totems and their lack of timers? These need fixing. The inability to drop your totems quickly? Their ridiculously low health? How many other buffs can be purged off of an entire party with one well placed wand-shot? (This is, admittedly, more of a PvP issue.) At least the 20 minute cooldown elemental guardian totems have a little health.

To sum it up, shamans are not perfect, immortal gods who can one shot other players with impunity and who can wander through instances in full DPS gear while still slapping massive chain heals around left and right. I personally think that restoration spec is pretty darn good right now, and both Elemental and Enhancement, especially Enhance, need some love. We know some is coming, and it's welcome. To my mind, the shaman might well be the most interestingly diverse class in the game, and these problems aren't enough to justify people's aversion to it. With their buffing ability and versatility a few fixes should be all it takes to help make them a popular and viable hybrid.

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WotLK zone list

2007-08-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

Games for Windows magazine has revealed a surprising amount of info on WoW over the past year or so. Now, a subscriber has written in and claims that this month's GFW (not on newsstands yet) contains, among other things, a full zone list for Northrend. Obviously this should be taken as unconfirmed, since we don't have any scans or anything to go on, but I'm inclined to believe it:

Howling Fjord (68-72)
Borean Tundra (68-72)
The Dragonblight (71-75)
Zul'Drak (73-76)
Grizzly Hills (74-76)
Azjol-Nerub (74-78)
Sholazar Basin (75-78)
The Storm Peaks (77-80)
Icecrown Glacier (77-80)
Lake Wintergrasp (Outdoor PvP)

Also note that WotLK is still in a fairly early stage of development, and so this is all subject to change. And finally, here's a couple other tidbits, ostensibly from GFW:

The Nexus is the instance hub in the west (Borean Tundra), and "a giant Horde citadel--the largest in Northrend" is also in Borean Tundra, but currently without a name. Also, the final raid wing of The Nexus will likely end with a fight with "half-mad Malygos himself".

Sounds interesting enough, although they seem to be sticking uncomfortably close to the Burning Crusade model. But we'll see. Does anyone else have a copy of this issue of GFW and can confirm this information?

[thanks, Neil]

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Town guards: Horde vs. Alliance

2007-08-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

Players from way back in the early days of WoW will remember that before there were battlegrounds, there was only the Hillsbrad Foothills. If you played on a PvP server, you were almost certainly killed (sometimes repeatedly) at some point by a much higher level player character from an enemy faction. Due to the close proximity of Horde and Alliance towns, the area between Tarren Mill and Southshore was a war zone and was very popular with the world PvP crowd. Since the introduction of battlegrounds and all the new expansion content, Hillsbrad has become much more quiet, but many players (including myself) still have fond memories of intense battles in that zone.

One thing that always struck me as odd was the disparity between the level of the Horde guards in Tarren Mill (level 60-ish elites) and the Alliance guards in Southshore (level 40-ish non-elites). Stealthy Horde players could slip into Southshore, kill NPCs and lower level players with little regard to the guards. However, any Alliance player attempting to do the same in Tarren Mill would be in for a rude awakening if he or she was spotted by the guards.

More recently I've found yet another difference between Horde guards and Alliance guards. I'd been testing characters on the PTR, and stopped by Stonebreaker Hold in Terokkar Forest with my undead rogue. When I dropped into stealth, I noticed that many of the NPCs, guards, and peons were able to see through stealth (they had that stealth detection icon floating above their heads). I remember being in Allerian Stronghold with my own human rogue and not seeing anyone that could see through stealth. I decided to sneak in (if I could) to see if the Alliance had trained their guards to detect stealth, and to my surprise, they hadn't!

The argument about whether or not Blizzard favors the Horde over the Alliance popped into my head for a moment -- I know it's old hat, and players from both sides have slung accusations and "proof" that Blizzard favors one faction over another, but I've never seen anything definitive.

I'm not looking to start up that old argument, but I am wondering -- has anyone else has noticed a situation like this, where the Horde's town guards are clearly superior to the Alliance's guards?

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Fear and how to fix it

2007-08-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

Draele just started a blog about being a Warlock called Rantings of the Afflicted, and today he's got a post up about that most heinous of Warlock abilites: yes, none other than fear. A touchy subject (to say the least), but he offers three different suggestions on how to make fear fun for everyone.

At its base, fear is actually Blizzard's way of trying to come up with another game mechanic. If you're a veteran MMORPG player, you know there are three archetype classes-- healer, DPS, and tank. All three of them are centered around damage-- either getting rid of it, doing it, or tanking it. Fear, however, plays with none of those rules-- it's a complete damage negator. The reason Warlocks have fear is so they can wear cloth and yet stay alive for a long time against one target-- long enough for their DoTs to come in.

The problem with fear, however, as even the developers have admitted, is that it's not fun for the person being feared-- getting feared leaves you with almost no option but to sit there and do nothing. It removes control from your character, and that's never fun.

So how can we fix it?

Draele offers three suggestions, none of which are "remove fear from the game." The first involved turning fear into more or less a damage spell: have it break after a certain percentage of damage is done, which leaves it up to the Warlock to do that damage in the short time that fear is going down. Dimishing returns would keep the lock from just fearing over and over, every damage round, until the target was dead.

The other two suggestions are basically the same, and these seem more like what Blizzard is aiming to make fear: Turn it into purely a CC spell, and have it break on damage. A lot of tweaking would have to be done (probably to both Warlock and other class abilities) to make sure that Locks could still hold their own in 1v1 with someone bearing down on them, but that seems the best option.

And even if Blizzard doesn't change Fear (to break on damage), they're definitely heading towards less and less fear anyway-- Draele doesn't mention it, but Fear Ward is getting spread around in the next expansion, if not sooner, and so Fear is going to lose a lot of ground as a mechanic in PvP, if not in PvE. Don't be scared, Warlocks-- Blizzard obviously isn't going to leave you out there on your own (Pardo's daughter plays one, remember?). But fear's days are definitely numbered.

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Why aren't solo instances coming to WoW?

2007-08-24T05:01:00.000-07:00

Eldiron of the Silvermane server thought he heard a rumor that the dev team was considering implementing solo instances. Many players chimed in with their wish list for what could be accomplished in that: traps for rogues to detect and disarm; loot tailored to your class; making the instances accessible once daily. Other players pointed out that many classes can already solo old world instances like Blackrock Depths.

Finally, Community Manager Nathaera chimed in that there were no current plans for implementing solo instances in Warcraft. They consider instances as they place for group content and leave the solo content for the outdoor areas. Another blue explained in an earlier thread why designing this kind of content isn't a good use of developer time.

But what if they did consider this idea? What would you like to see in a solo instance?

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The story of your first epic

2007-08-24T04:57:00.000-07:00

The first time you experience an event in World of Warcraft is something you never forget. The first time you saw one of the enormous player cities. The first time you saw a player on a mount. The first time you got a random tell from a gold spammer.

Amadeais of the Nazjatar server remembers his first purple, the Underworld Band. He created a thread on the official forums and many have chimed in with their own first epics. From the hard-won PvP purples to the surprise gift from a generous guildmate.

What about you? What was the first purple drop you remember receiving? Was it a world drop, boss loot or did you save up your coppers and bought it off the Auction House? Do you still keep it in your bank? Tell us your story.

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Grim Batol: Past and future

2007-08-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

Tabot asks about Grim Batol, and he's right-- there is a bit of rumbling going around about that place. It started at BlizzCon, in the dungeons and raids panel, where Jeff Kaplan mentioned that Grim Batol, the huge fortress in the Wetlands currently surrounded by the Red Dragonflight, is one of the locations they're looking at adding content.

To find the past of Grim Batol, you've got to read Day of the Dragon, the novel by Richard A. Knaak. Basically, the Dragonmaw Orc clan had captured Alexstrasza in Grim Batol, and was using her to make their own dragons. Rhonin (who will be the leader of the Kirin Tor in WotLK) was able to break her out and free her. And that didn't make Deathwing (Onyxia and Nefarian's father, and the big bad black dragon aspect of Azeroth) very happy, because he was trying to steal Alex's eggs to make his own dragonflight. Rhonin eventually defeated Deathwing, and there DotD ends.

Cut to now. No player has ever been inside Grim Batol, and the only place it's ever been used in the game is as the spawn point for a dragon in the Horde's Onyxia key quest. Meanwhile Deathwing is MIA, or maybe even kept prisoner in Grim Batol (rumors say the Red Dragonflight may have taken him prisoner in there to get revenge).

However, things (as usual) are not always as they seem. Lately, there have been murmurs (in Outland of all places) that Deathwing is back. Grim Batol may not be a simple fortress-- it may consist of the whole coastline on the eastern side of the Wetlands. And if Deathwing is free, I've heard rumors that he, like Rhonin, may be found up north-- Northrend's Dragonblight is a place where dragons go to die, and Deathwing is supposedly headed up there, claiming that all he wants is to end his life in peace.

Of course, he's not to be believed. And the Red Dragonflight is doing something in Grim Batol, even if it's not keeping Deathwing prisoner. Only time will tell what Blizzard plans to do with the big fortress overlooking the Wetlands.

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Haste and the need for speed

2007-08-24T04:29:00.001-07:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about the recent change to haste rating on the PTR. Melee classes are upset because the effects of melee haste rating has been nerfed by about a third, while caster classes are enjoying a buff to their spell haste rating.

Many players are arguing that the haste nerf for melee classes is unnecessary -- and while I tend to agree, it's hard to argue when rogues like Furi (who completed his legendary sword set earlier this month), or a Fury Warrior like Svag are cracking 3000 DPS in some fights all on their own. These players are specced and geared to take full advantage of haste rating

I'm in a modest guild that's raiding Kara, and our total DPS output is usually around 2200-2500. When one player can crank out more damage than a 10 man raid (even if they're geared out and buffed), something seems to be wrong. Maybe this haste change is for the best -- but it's pretty devastating to any melee class that depends on white damage for DPS.

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WoW Moviewatch: The Legend of Stalvan

2007-08-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

If you have an Alliance toon, one of your early extensive quest chains was probably The Legend of Stalvan out of Duskwood. This series of quests had you running over much of the lands south of Stormwind as you learned of the bloody massacre of travelling nobles at the hand of Stalvan Mistmantle. The quest culminated in gathering a few random players and camping the spawn point for the undead Stalvan. And then trying to find a cure for that annoying curse he puts on you before you put him back in the ground.

An enterprising Machinimist has put together a movie that tells the tragic tale of what drove Stalvan to his unforgivable deed. The production value is excellent. The use of the WoW Modeler and WoW Map Viewer is put to exceptional use. There is also wonderful use of defocus to draw your eye to different parts of the screen. My only complaint is the heavy Scottish accent of the narrator. Remember a little dwarf goes a long way.

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The console interactivity I wish WoW could have

2007-08-22T20:10:00.000-07:00

As a teenager, I loved console games. I grew up with Nintendo game images, tactics and ideas rolling through my mind. For various reasons, however, I've never really had a chance to pick up any console system since then, and I have often wondered how many changes have taken place in those sorts of games over the years.

So recently one of my friends treated me to a few evenings where he just showed me a few of his console games, so that I could get a sense of what they're like these days. The experience made me wish that it were possible for World of Warcraft to incorporate a few of the features I saw in those games.

The biggest one was a sense of interacting more with the in-game environment that your character lives in. Especially in this game God of War, I loved how the main character was able to do special moves in special situations, such as jump on top of a monster and rip its head off, or pin it to the ground, or even climb inside its giant mouth. He can also sometimes climb walls or use special items to solve interesting environmental puzzles. Many other games have this sort of experience where there seems to be less of a barrier between your character and the other entities in the game's world.

WoW just doesn't have that interactive feeling. Whenever you swing your sword, you swing it in pretty much the same way, even if your target is so huge that you're actually just swinging at the empty space between its massive legs. Whenever you run along up hills or mountains, you do just fine until you come to that magical angle at which your character cannot climb, cannot crawl -- only runs in place against an invisible barrier, even though visually it seems like he should be able to just use his hands.

I have no idea how Blizzard would manage it, but I really wish my WoW character could climb up walls (or at least ladders!), flip enemies around, or climb up on top of giants' shoulders and stab them in the head. Even if all these things are an impossibility, I still hope there's something significant they could do to help foster a more cohesive and interactive feel between our characters and everything else in Azeroth.

Do you ever wish for some console game features in WoW? Or are they totally apples vs. oranges for you?

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Armory changes URLs

2007-08-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note: the Armory, which used to be located at armory.worldofwarcraft.com (and still is, actually), can now be found at wowarmory.com. Neth confirms that it's not a bug or a hack or a spammer or anything-- apparently Blizzard just wanted to simplify the URL.

Well, that, and "wowarmory.com" is a lot closer to "wowinsider.com." And we all know that's what you think of when you want to find your favorite information about World of Warcraft, right?

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The eventual nerfing of Karazhan

2007-08-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

When Lua from Doomhammer posts on the forums asking for a little Karazhan trash relief, Bornakk (who's new on the forums-- not sure whether he's a CM or a mod yet) says no-- Blizzard is happy with the pacing of Karazhan. So you're meant to be taking a long time clearing all those little mana guys before and after Curator.

But this idea of making Karazhan faster brings up another point I've been mulling over for a while now. When we first heard about Kara, a "new 10man instance," back when we were all playing vanilla WoW, I got really excited about the fact that we were going to have a new UBRS-- an epic raid that 10 people could finish off in a few hours. Kind of a short but preview of the bigger raids to come. Fighting Rend while Nefarian was yelling at him was some of the best times I'd ever had in WoW, and I looked forward to leading the same kinds of groups through Karazhan.

But Karazhan didn't turn out like that, did it? It's still more complicated, and for many guilds, it's still the main event. There's a timer on it, most groups take at least two days to clean it out, and while the encounters in UBRS weren't necessarily easy if your group wasn't up to it, the encounters in Karazhan are pretty merciless-- Moroes takes coordination that even the Drakk fight never needed.

That's not necessarily a bad thing-- I like Karazhan a lot. But just as UBRS was diluted from its original form (as a harder 15 man instance with more trash than it has now), I wonder if Karazhan will eventually have the same fate. When more and more guilds have moved up the ladder, and we're all farming Zul'Aman and progressing on Mount Hyjal, will Blizzard eventually nerf Kara into the new UBRS, with streamlined trash and no timer?

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Encrypted Text: A field guide to bad rogues

2007-08-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

A wise man once wrote that there aren't as many people in the world as there seems to be. Yes, there are billions of bodies on this humble planet -- but sometimes it feels as if there's only a couple of thousand personalities, since we keep running into the same archetypes over and over again.

It's the same with WoW players -- particularly bad WoW players. We even have names for some of them: ninja, drama queen, lootwhore. Today on Encrypted Text, we'll be discussing some rogue-specific types of bad players, including their plumage, distinctive mating calls, and where to spot them in the wild.

The Clumsy Rogue

Identification: This rogue missed out on the stealthy part of playing a stealth class. Whether it's breaking crowd control by misclicks, walking into mobs while stealthed, or simply falling off a cliff/bridge/elevator/stairwell into a group of angry murlocs, this rogue is the equivalent of a ninja walking around in hobnailed boots. With a cane. Banging on cymbals. I'd say I'm a bit of a Clumsy Rogue myself, and my guildmates would probably agree as soon as they run back to their bodies
Mating call: "Oops. Just let me die! Just let me die!"
Habitat: Any instance that requires moving around the edge of things, moving outside a certain radius, or not running directly into your teammates (Gruul.)

The Fearful Rogue

Identification: This rogue is the polar opposite of the Clumsy Rogue. Instead of being inept at stealthing, he's good ... too good. As in he doesn't want to ever come out of his hiding place. This rogue stealths to every fight, only starts attacking when the mob's been tanked for about thirty seconds, and vanishes the moment the mob even looks in his direction. He's also conspicuously absent during buffs and screenshots. There's a nice hybrid of the Clumsy Rogue and the Fearful Rogue out there that likes to stealth past mobs to explore, and then suddenly walks into something and pulls half the instance
Mating Call: "I thought I was getting close to pulling aggro."
Habitat: The Blackwing Lair suppression room, and doing any quest that requires you to just pick up objects hidden in caves/camps/nests.

The Look At My Crits Rogue

Identification: This guy (and it almost always is a guy) is very, very into his crits. He stacks crit rating. He has an addon that tracks his highest crits. He may even have an addon that plays an annoying sound, like the Mortal Kombat "FINISH HIM!", whenever he crits. Sure, his hit rating is abysmal and he sucks on the DPS meters, but that doesn't matter to this guy.
Mating Call: See title.
Habitat: Dueling people in front of Ironforge/Orgrimmar, never raiding because his hit rating is lower than Death Valley.

The Prima Donna Rogue

Identification: This rogue feels that she is the star around which the guild revolves. She considers herself the most skilled player in the guild, and most deserving of raid spots, good items and constant attention. If she's not number one on the damage meters, she will make excuses for her performance, and will often ask officers (if she's not one herself) to bend rules for her. Eventually, she will get fed up and make a dramatic /gquit the moment anything goes wrong or progression slows down even slightly, and hop to a new guild with her tales of mistreatment.
Mating Call: "Whatever would you guys do without me?"
Habitat: Any major raiding guild with fast progression. This happens in every class, but it's funniest in rogues -- a prima donna main tank or top healer kind of has a point, but there are millions of rogues out there salivating for a raid slot.

The I Only Do DPS Rogue

Identification: I've never seen this rogue myself, but it's a pet peeve of one of my rogue mentors. Some rogues take the "Rogues have one job and that's to DPS" stuff on the forums a little too seriously, and therefore refuse to stop DPSing to do anything else. This rogue might as well have only three buttons: Backstab/SS, Slice and Dice, and Rupture, because those are the only three he uses. He won't feint or vanish because they're wastes of energy, doesn't know how to COS out of magic, refuses to kick and interrupt vital spells, and (of course) would never deign to bandage himself.
Mating Call: "Can't someone else interrupt the spells? I never have enough energy to kick, and it's distracting."
Habitat: Wiping your group on High King Maulgar, Shade of Aran, or Magtheridon.

The HEAL ME Rogue

Identification: Once upon a time, I was in a guild with a skilled but rather young rogue. This rogue constantly badgered the healers to heal him, even when it was a tough fight and they were having enough trouble keeping up the tank. Amazingly, he also tended to die on trash mobs a lot more than every other rogue. A couple months after I noticed this, he was doing the "HEAL ME" thing again (this time in a private chat channel) when a druid told me why he died so often. Apparently, he had told a feral druid during a guild BRD fun run that he didn't need the Hand of Justice because "druids can only heal." That, combined with his incessant cries for heals, led the druids to make a pact never to heal him. And since druids were mostly the guys who healed rogues on trash, he died a lot.
Mating Call: "What are the healers doing back there, looking at porn?"
Habitat: Any instance group, from 5-man to 40-man.

The Theorycrafting Rogue Who Failed Math

Identification: This rogue has come up with a spec/gear/playstyle choice that isn't accepted by the majority of rogues, and has decided to defend it with an onslaught of numbers. When other rogues point out a common-sense reason why his scheme won't work, he comes at them with a gaggle of equations and then calls them morons. However, he has made some sort of basic calculation error that invalidates his whole premise. The quintessential example of this is a fairly progressed guild I've heard of where every single rogue dual-wielded Blinkstrike, because one of the rogue leaders had a malformed idea of how valuable the proc was.
Mating Call: "It's not my fault if you aren't able to comprehend my work."
Habitat: Almost exclusively rogue forums.

The But I Might Respec Rogue

Identification: This rogue is specced for swords. No, wait, maybe maces. Ooh, that's shiny -- how about daggers today? Basically, she's a rogue-specific version of a lootwhore. She claims any and all purple weapons, whether or not there's another player in the raid who it would be a big upgrade for. If she's using daggers and a nice sword drops, she'll roll, since she was "only daggers until a good sword dropped" -- even if there's a sword rogue in the raid. Wash, rinse, and repeat for any other weapons. She'll also take feral druid gear and hunter ranged weaons. The worst instance of this I've ever heard, although it may be apocryphal, was a rogue who rolled on an axe because "rogues can use axes in the next patch."
Mating Call: "Why is everyone getting upset? It's better than what I'm using right now."
Habitat: Your Kara raid, waiting in the shadows for Malchazzeen.

Do you know of any interesting rogue archetypes? Tell us more!

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Enforcing RP

2007-08-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

The rogue Grenthar sighed as he slowly walked through the crowd at the main entrance of Stormwind. It had been a long day of slaughtering boars and thinning out the Gnoll population, but it was worth it-- he had a pack full of skins and trinkets to put up for auction. He entered the House, sticking to the shadows by instinct, and when his turn came, dealt quickly and quietly with the auctioneer, firmly setting each starter and buyout price for his goods.

Suddenly, there was a yell from outside in the city: "OMG did you just see what happened on 24? Jack BAuer ROXXORS!!"

Yeah, personally, I'm not that big on roleplaying, but I can see what people get out of it-- complete immersion in a world where they're the hero. Unfortunately for those really interested in it, the illusion is so easy to break that even on RP servers, Blizzard doesn't really enforce roleplaying that much. From what I've gathered, the majority of it takes place in groups and guilds of people committed to doing it right.

So when Patsie asks why Blizzard even has an RP policy when they don't enforce it, I can see what he's saying. And maybe Blizzard should crack down on non-RPers, just as they've cracked down on gold spammers and AFKers. What if everyone on an RP server could report someone with just a right click, and if enough reports came in on that person, they earned a suspension or even a ban from the server entirely? You have to think that if Blizzard made a serious effort to shut down non-RP activity on an RP server, they'd become what they were meant to be in the first place-- servers where everyone actually played a role.

Then again, people who don't roleplay are paying their $15 like the rest of us, and, as Patsie says, there are lots of people on the RP servers who didn't join them to RP. But if Blizzard is advertising these servers as RP, shouldn't they be taking steps (beyond enforcing the naming convention, which is iffy itself) to make them so?

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WoW Battle Chest on its way

2007-08-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

In a move that surprises everyone who wasn't familiar with Blizzard before WoW, a WoW Battle Chest has been announced. It will include WoW, Burning Crusade, and the "official" BradyGames strategy guides for both. The best part is the price: $39.99 MSRP, which is about what BC by itself is going for most places. The games will ship on DVD. Needless to say, this will be a great product for getting new players into the game, or for getting yourself another account. It will start shipping on October 2. Blizzard has made a Battle Chest for each of its previous franchises, so this one was probably inevitable, but is no less welcome for that.

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How to find a new guild

2007-08-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Zodo from LFG KZ recently sent us a link to a post on his blog about "guildshopping on a new server" (yes, I know it's spelled wrong on his site, give the guy a break). If you've recently transferred servers or have just rolled up a new character and are looking for a good guild, it's definitely worth a look.

There are a few things I disagree with in there-- I find it really hard to believe that small servers don't have high level raiding guilds, and in my experience, a bigger population may theoretically mean lower prices, but in practice that's not always true. But his later steps are good ones, especially making sure you put in the research on where a guild's at in terms of progression (some guilds will help you get to their level, but most really high level guilds would rather you're already up there with them), and what classes they're interested in recruiting. Even if a guild says they're not recruiting, being nice and chatting with someone from the guild (in a city, as Zodo says, not in a raid), can clue you in on at least how you might get a trial run with them.

And applying for guilds is something very basic that everyone trying to get into a great guild should be more than happy to do. I used to be in the camp of "lol it's just a game i'm not applying," but the fact is that the guilds that seriously ask for (and consider) applications tend to be the better guilds to be in, and so the few minutes spent filling out a form intelligently is more than worth it in the long run. If you're about to face this situation, Zodo's guide is definitely worth a read.

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Tigole speaks in Leipzig

2007-08-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

The Leipzig Games Convention in Germany kicked off today, and of course Blizzard is there in force. Games mag buffed.de got a good interview in with Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan, and MMO-Champion was good enough to get an English translation up in short order. As you might expect, topics covered were WotLK-centric. Here are some of my favorite tidbits:

There will be a new "Old Stratholme" instance in the Caverns of Time, which will be a level 80 5-man: Warcraft 3 players however know Stratholme from a singleplayer mission, in which Arthas travels to the city and sets all buildings on fire, kills the citizens and fights Mal'Ganis. In Wrath of the Lich King you fight at Prince Arthas' side, by travelling through the Caverns of Time. We are giving you the opportunity of meeting Arthas at a time at which he was not a great villain yet. You are "cleaning" Stratholme and igniting buildings!
Apparently you won't need level 80 after all to get a Death Knight, as this would just create an even more intense rush to 80, and people wouldn't be properly enjoying the content. Instead the required level might be 55–60. Additionally, Tigole said upon reaching the required level, "Then you create your Death Knight and face some challenges. If you have mastered them, you will get your Death Knight." This implies to me that the unlocking quests will not be done on your main, but on your new DK, and they need to be completed in order to take the new character any farther.
Future hero classes could be Demon Hunter, Arch Mage, and Blademaster. However, they seem to be sticking with the "one hero class in WotLK, maybe more later" mentality.

I'm especially pleased about 80 not being the required level for DKs; that opens the possibility of making your DK in order to experience the WotLK content. On the other hand, that might not be such a hot idea, since you might see a dearth of other classes in the WotLK instance groups. Head over to MMO-Champion for the full translation. If you speak German, the original is at buffed.de.

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Money Making Guide for World of Warcraft

2007-08-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

when you make a new charcter make your professions fishing cooking start fishing in low level fishing areas then cook the fish it will be getting your cooking higher and your fishing higher once your fishing hits 170 go to stranglethorn vale make sure your at least 30 before you go there then go to wild shore its a 40 area so before careful then keep travling by the water so you wont die from a 40 tell you see a floating wrekage then fish in it some times you get greens the greens are for level 40 and up keep doing this for a long time dont destroy anything you get from the wreckage when your fishing in them you hav ea good chance of getting a chest dont worry you dont have to pick pocket it you also get beer in the wreckages as soon as you do this go sell the stuff in auction house the greens should be worth like 10 gold if you happen to find a necklace then sell it for 20 gold they are really rare or you can just say WTS then link in the name of the necklace for cooking try to get deviate delight recipe in AH with the money you have as soon as you get it go to the oasis in the barrens then fish for deviate fish and then by mild spices get at least 20 deviate fish then go to any major city and sell it in AH for 20 WoW Gold. now you have enough money to get a mount.

Are you tired of reskinned items yet?

2007-08-21T01:29:00.000-07:00

Reading this post from the general forums, I was reminded of my own experiences in trying to collect the reskinned version of Wrath for both my human and my tauren. Personally, I have always been among the minority that loved Wrath as a set for its looks... I mean, come on, that looks pretty badass on a tauren. While I personally enjoyed being able to go back and get the looks of a set I didn't manage to complete (damn you, Nefarian, why wouldn't you drop that breastplate) I can understand people wanting to get away from some sets... there are how many shoulders out there now that look like Dragonstalker, again?

What sets are you glad to see back? What sets should they have retired the graphics forever? (I know a lot of you will say Wrath. You're mean.) Would anyone want to see a high-end blue or purple level 70 reskin of Dreadnaught or Plagueheart? It does make me wonder what, exactly, they'll have the bosses in a re-tuned Naxxramas in the expansion.

Are you tired of the old skins or happy to see old friends?

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Around Azeroth: Olympic Gnome racing

2007-08-21T01:20:00.000-07:00

Sure, you've seen Tauren racing, but it's just not quite the same as seeing an equal number of adorably tiny cotton-candy-hair Gnomes racing. This shot, sent in by reader Svenn of Aggramar (EU) shows a crowd of the charming beasts preparing for the Gnome race portion of the Laughing Skull Olympics, held on Laughing Skull (EU) at the end of July. And if this screenshot is to be taken as evidence, I'd venture a guess that the event was a blast for everyone involved!

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Beyond Patch 2.2: Schwick's compilation of verified info

2007-08-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

Patch 2.2, currently in testing on the PTR, has some great improvements like voice chat and reporting AFK'ers in Battlegrounds. What it doesn't have is any new, big, sexy chunk of playable content. So when are we going to see the post-Karazhan 10-main raid zone, Zul'Aman? New Heroic Badge rewards? Guild banks? Oh, we already know that last one.

Forum MVP Schwick on the WoW European forums has compiled a list of known updates in Patch 2.3 and beyond. He often provide reference links to his sources form many of his future patch notes, which makes him an information god in my book.

He also goes on to list all the verified information about the WotLK expansion. I thought I had read all the info that was out already, but on Schwick's list I found items I didn't know, like the fact that Blizzard has a plan to deal with the fact that the Horde doesn't have a fear ward. Or that Naxxramas, the last raid zone introduced before TBC launched, will be repurposed in the new expansion. Or that new shaders will be introduced for shinier graphics. Mmm, sparkles.

Check out Schwick's post if you want to get a look ahead about what's known for future patches.

Screenshot of Zul'Aman boss models courtesy of MMO-Champion.com.

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WoW Moviewatch: The Bloodsail Grind

2007-08-21T01:10:00.000-07:00

Those who have grinded faction with the Bloodsail Buccaneers are a unique bunch. They've put a lot of time and effort into alienating themselves from the Goblins (and essentially outcasting themselves from Booty Bay, Everlook, Gadgatzen, Ratchet, and Area 52) all for a swanky pirate outfit that confers no game bonuses other than making you look cool. Wouldthatbeokay, who posted this particular video, gives us a brief taste of what you'll be devoting hours of your life to doing, all in the name of a pirate hat.

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Trust me, everything is under control

2007-08-21T01:03:00.000-07:00

Marilyn has an interesting point over at WoW Ladies: if you see her grinding Consortium rep and taking on three mobs at a time in Netherstorm, leave her alone-- it's all under control. I sometimes have this same problem as a resto Shaman-- onlookers don't always realize that even though my health is low and I'm almost out of mana, redemption for me is just a huge heal and a Mana Tide totem away. Things may look bad, but really, don't worry about it-- my Earth Shield just got refreshed, and I'm good to go for two more mobs, so no, I don't need saving.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I really want to discourage people to help in this game-- I'd much rather have them help me fight than really be in trouble and have them /laugh as I die. So I'm not sure I'd tell everyone to lay off.

Rather, the problem here is that when I pull a group of mobs, I don't want someone else stepping in and tagging them away from me in the name of help. So there are plenty of ways to help that don't include stealing my XP-- drop a DoT on something that's been tagged (I do this all the time on my Shadow Priest), or throw me a heal (always appreciated, even if my Mana Tide totem is off cooldown). And just paying attention is nice, too-- nothing burns me more as a Rogue than taking the time to sneak up on a mob, only to have them charged by an overzealous warrior who claims afterwards that they didn't see my Distract go off.

If it's legitimate kill-stealing, the best option is just to ignore and move on to a less populated area-- there's no dealing with those people. But if you do see someone fighting a bunch of mobs solo, there are better ways to help than grabbing one of their kills, and chances are they'll be more than happy to help you the next time around.

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Mythic founder: WoW "will be in its decline" in a few years

2007-08-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

You could probably fill a library with the number of stupid things game developers say about their competitors, but here's one more. In an interview with Shacknews, former Mythic co-founder Matt Firor, charged with putting together a brand-new MMO, says this about World of Warcraft:

... Any MMO starting development today isn't going to have to worry too much about competing with WoW--it'll be in its decline by the time any new game launches.

Think so? From what we've heard from Blizzard, they don't. Even if Blizz only goes two more expansions (and Everquest, the most popular MMO until WoW, went for fourteen), WoW is sticking around for five or six years. And yes, there are those folks who are done now, but Azeroth's population hasn't stopped going up yet-- does Firor really think they won't be a competitor in just a few years?

That doesn't mean Blizzard is unbeatable, but it does mean that they're competition. As Firor's former employer says (EA Mythic is now working on Warhammer Online, which some say is WoW's biggest threat in the MMO market), you have to play a different game.

WoW is The Beatles, who changed music forever. You can't be the Beatles; they already exist. You can't copy them. If you try, you become The Monkees. You've got no chance. We're not The Beatles. We're Led Zeppelin.

Staking your new game on WoW's decline is a bad idea, and predicting that decline to be just a few years off is a worse one. WoW won't last forever, but Blizzard's monster MMO isn't done yet.

[ via WorldofWar ]

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Harry Plotter and the Ninja of the Phoenix

2007-08-21T00:54:00.000-07:00

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs roamed Azeroth and barely anyone I knew had their epic mount, we used to argue about what would happen if the tiger mount dropped in ZG. This was back when the epic mounts themselves were the expensive part, not the training. There were two different schools of thought on the subject. There were some who thought that people without an epic mount should get first dibs, as it would essentially be only a cosmetic upgrade for people who had their epics. The other people thought that epic mount-holders shouldn't be prevented from rolling on a rare, awesome thing just because they had taken the time to farm for their epic. This argument largely died when the cost of mount training became the expensive thing. Or did it?

Recently, a guild on my server killed Kael'thas and received the Ashes of Al'ar, also known as the phoenix mount. The guild leader/master looter linked all the loot, said that they would discuss the phoenix mount later ... and after the rest of the loot was handed out, proceeded to masterloot it to himself. A few officers of the guild defended his actions by saying that some officers had encouraged him to take it, which somewhat neglects the fact that this guild runs on DKP instead of officer loot, and that running a guild is a tough job that deserves some extra recognition.

This has prompted a spirited discussion about what to do when ultra-rare mounts drop. There seems to be five options here: masterlooting it to yourself, having everyone roll, having everyone with 300 skill roll, bidding DKP, or having everyone with 300 skill bid DKP. Most people I've talked to seem to think that masterlooting it to yourself is a cheap option, but are undecided as to whether you should have to have 300 riding skill to roll.

Personally, I think that this would be an excellent opportunity to use a bidding DKP system, even if you have fixed DKP values (like my guild does) because it's hard to assign worth to a cosmetic upgrade. That way, people who really, really want a phoenix mount can blow all their DKP to get it. What do you think guilds should do about rare mount drops? Is it really a ninja if the masterlooter takes something? Should guild/raid leaders get some sort of bonus when it comes to loot distribution?

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Real friends vs. virtual friends

2007-08-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I had some trouble with my real life friends-- they were organizing an impromptu run to the movies, but I had committed to a Gruul's raid, and had to decline, to their consternation. And yesterday, the exact opposite happened-- I went on a raid with my guild for the first time in a few weeks (because different real life issues had kept me from raiding for a while), and they gave me a little ribbing about being so behind.

It just doesn't seem fair. I'm getting trouble from both my real life and my internet friends for choosing to hang out with one over the other. Of course, both groups aren't really angry at me for doing what I choose to do-- my guild isn't really bothered by my absence of late (although I don't exactly get first choice at loot rolling any more, understandably), and my real-life friends can't blame me for staying in sometimes and playing videogames (although they worry about me if I do it more often than not).

As ippy says, there are really two camps on this-- either you think that real life is always more important than virtual interaction, or that both are equally worthwhile. In the past, I've been closer to the first option-- that I should always go hang out with people in real life rather than stay at home playing WoW or Bioshock (which I will be tomorrow, no matter what my friends are doing). But lately, as my relationships in WoW grow stronger, I'm feeling more of a pull to give that priority sometimes, at least when it doesn't affect my other relationships.

Is that bad? This seems like a topic for our Azeroth Interrupted column (featured today, by the way, on the front page of the BBC's tech site-- cheers, Robin!), but I'd like to hear what you all think as well. Does real life get priority always, or is it more nuanced than that?

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Forum Thread of the Day: Quest text that makes you laugh

2007-08-21T00:39:00.000-07:00

Relyndrel sets us off on a hilarious ride through Blizzard's real genius: turning something as straightforward as playing a videogame into a rich, entertaining, and sometimes even meta experience. He starts off a collection of the best quest text in the game, including the various letters, yells, and whispers that float around while doing said quests. All the best stuff is here:

Fruit vendor, do you not value your life?!
Rend Blackhand's note to a stupid orc: "Destroy this letter, idiot!"
Blizzard's sly reply to AV whiners
And the terrific Digging Through Bones dialogue

I don't see my favorite mentioned in the first few pages-- as I've said before, my favorite quest in the whole game is probably the Absent Minded Prospector, in which a dwarf leisurely browses through a dig while you're left to fight off all kinds of huge golems.

Really, this game is just all about clicking buttons-- you click a button to start a quest, you click some buttons to kill things (or do some thing), and then you click another button to end a quest. But it's the flavor that Blizzard adds-- all of these weird characters, strange stories, and references to everything else we know-- that really make the experience what it is, and show off just how good Blizzard is at making clicking buttons interesting and fun.

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Patch 2.2 on the PTR: New Violet Eye Recipes

2007-08-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

New recipes have appeared on the test server with our Karazhan-related friends, the Archmages of Kirin Tor sect known as The Violet Eye. Some of these recipes are very nice indeed, including a high-end crafted leather chest for rogues and feral druids, a +20 agility enchant to weapons, a Flask recipe granting +35 to all resists & +18 to all stats and another high end leatherworking recipe, this time a cloak with a boatload of strength and melee crit stats.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Violet Eye faction, reputation is gained through the key quest for Karazhan as well as a quest within Karazhan and killing mobs in the 10-man raid zone. Reputation rewards they currently provide include the Violet Signet Rings (through a reputation gaining quest), the Iceguard frost-resist, plate recipes for blacksmiths, a crafted frost-resist ring and an Inscription granting +7 to all resists on a shoulder item.

Read on for exact details on the new recipes.

Recipe: Flask of Chromatic Wonder - 4g
Requires Alchemy (375)
Requires The Violet Eye - Honored
Use: Teaches you how to make a Flask of Chromatic Wonder

Flask of Chromatic Wonder
Requires Level 65
Use: Increases resistance to all schools of magic by 35 and all stats by 18 for 2 hrs. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.

Requires Dreaming Glory (7), Netherbloom (3), Fel Lotus, Imbued Vial

Pattern: Shadowprowler's Chestguard - 24g
Binds when picked up
Requires Leatherworking (365)
Requires The Violet Eye - Revered
Use: Teaches you how to make Shadowprowler's Chestguard

Shadowprowler's Chestguard
Binds when equipped
Chest - Leather
333 Armor
+32 Strength
+40 Agility
+12 Stamina
[ ] Red Socket
[ ] Blue Socket
[ ] Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Agility
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves hit rating by 8.

Requires Heavy Knothide Leather (10), Bolt of Soulcloth (16), Primal Earth (12), Primal Shadow (12), Primal Nether (2)

Formula: Enchant Weapon - Greater Agility - 3g
Binds when picked up
Requires Enchanting (350)
Requires The Violet Eye - Exalted
Use: Teaches how to permanently enchant a weapon to grant 20 Agility.

Pattern: Cloak of Darkness - 5g
Binds when picked up
Requires Leatherworking (360)
Requires The Violet Eye - Exalted
Use: Teaches you how to craft a Cloak of Darkness

Cloak of Darkness
Binds when equipped
Back
101 Armor
+23 Strength
+25 Stamina
[ ] Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +2 Critical Strike Rating
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves melee critical strike rating by 24

Requires Heavy Knothide Leather (8), Bolt of Soulcloth (12), Primal Shadow (12), Primal Nether (4)

These all appear on Apprentice Darius who stands in front of the Karazhan entrance in Deadwind Pass. If you are interested in these recipes, make sure to check if the stats/effects are the same when the patch goes live.

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Are instance drops really random?

2007-08-21T00:25:00.000-07:00

There are so many angles you can spin this blog entry from Coralie from that it took me half an hour (and three quarters of a can of Four Cheese Pringles) to choose one. I think I've made the choice that is least likely to involve her purchasing a server transfer to Zangarmarsh and hunting me down.

Coralie is a rogue on the Sentinels realm who, like most rogues, is trying to keep her head above water in a series of instances that are not known to be overly rogue-friendly. As a fellow rogue, and a subtlety rogue no less (who in my opinion have it much worse) I feel her pain. Instance slots are sometimes hard to come by for those of us who practice the art of subterfuge, and let's not even talk about raids.

Coralie's problem doesn't appear to be getting groups though. Apparently the Stormwraiths are good to her. Coralie's issue is with the boss loot tables. She doesn't go as far as to imply that anything is rigged against her, but her post is pretty compelling. Apparently the paladins in her guild have taken to bringing her along on instance runs because they find her to be a good luck charm for plate drops and other paladin items. If I'm reading this right, she's even taken to distributing "personally blessed" Lucky Charms to paladins who need to make runs when she isn't available to go herself. (As a side note, if she has enough of them to have multiple stacks, she certainly doesn't lack perseverance.)

Those of us who frequent database sites such as Thottbot or Wowhead know the numbers game that's involved. Each piece that a boss drops has a percentage drop rate attached to it. But is it really purely a numbers game? We've all been on runs with either a paladin or shaman healer and no cloth wearers when nothing drops except cloth and wands. Do you have a guildmate with ridiculously bad luck like Coralie? Or do you think perhaps there might be more to drop rates than pure math? As ridiculous as it sounds, Coralie sure makes a compelling (albeit exceptionally amusing) argument.

In all seriousness, I would never accuse Blizzard of any wrongdoing. Posts like Coralie's definitely make you think though.

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Reader UI of the Week: Justo

2007-08-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

This week's Reader UI of the Week submission is from Justo, level 70 Dwarven Hunter from the guild on the Aerie Peak PVE server. As he told me in his note to me (short and sweet, but full of the important information) he likes to call this setup "controlled clutter" because he just likes to have lots of information on-screen at all times.

For those who are curious to see this UI in action, as well as Justo's listing of the mods he uses and what their different purposes are, check out the run-down he sent me after the jump!
My UI is set up at a 1680x1050 resolution on a 20 inch wide-screen LCD Sceptre monitor. The theme for my UI is what I like to call "controlled clutter." I like simplicity, but at the same time I LOVE information and availability. This UI allows [me to have] everything I have hot keyed and/or clickable to be out in the open. [That way] It is available for quick use while still leaving plenty of screen room to see everything.

My list of add-ons

AG Unitframes - Very nice looking unit frame add-on. I like its designability and I LOVE the 3-D portraits.
Bongos2 - This allows for the movement and creation of all your bars. You can create pretty much as many bars as you want, in any length that you want. You can also scale the bars to make them as big or small as you want.
Item rack - This mod lets you switch between gear sets with the click of whatever hot key you assign it.
Fubar - Yeah, I have like 9 thousand plug-ins for Fubar so I'm not gonna name them all. Lots of little tidbits of information there.
Tracker dial - As a hunter this mod is gold. Just mouse over the tracking icon on the mini-map and it shows everything you are capable of tracking. After you select something, it hides itself again.
CT Raid Assist - I only use it for main tank windows in raids.
Deadly Boss Mods - A really good boss mod, but I only use it for the BG timer bars that it has.
Big Wigs Boss Mods - Yet another boss mods that I personally like better than Deadly. This is my main boss mod.
Atlas/Atlasloot enhanced - This is an absolute no-brainer. Wanna know what boss drops what loot? Click and explore....
CT Mod - Just an assortment of most of the mods CT offers on their main site. Too many to name.
Omnicc - The best cool-down counter I have ever seen. It shows numerical cool-downs on any bar you have. When something cools down, it flashes brightly so you are sure to not miss it.
Improved Error Frame - This mod shows any error messages you get in a clickable mini-map button instead of blowing up your screen in the middle of something important.
Answering machine plus - When you go /afk this records any whispers and auction house messages you received.
Auctioneer - I only use it for the tool tip pricing, but this allows you to post on the AH a little easier.
Bank Items - This mod shows your bank and equipped items on any character you have on any realm, FROM any character on any realm. Ever been on an alt and someone asked if you had something they needed on your main? No more switching over to find out.
Advanced Trade-skill Window - Allows you to customize what you can make with your professions. I have all mine alphabetized.
Hunter range - Shows how far away from your target you are.
Improved Buff Timers - Shows minutes and seconds on the blizzard default buff icons.
KHunterTimers - Timer bars for everything hunter.
Rating Buster - This mod compares stats and percentages form linked/viewed items with what you currently have equipped. VERY helpful in gear selection.
Sct/Sctd - Scrolling combat text and scrolling combat text damage. Puts all damage and combat info above your head.
KTM Threatmeter - Shows a bar graph of threat levels. No more "wtf Justo you pulled aggro, GAWD!" :)
Meuhmeuh Feign Death Resist Bell - This mod plays an obnoxious bell sound when your FD gets resisted. Patch 2.0 broke it and the developer never fixed it, so i took it upon myself back then to fix it and post it up on Curse.

While I love having lots of information myself, I have to admit, having that much on screen for me would probably be overload. There again, my main is a Rogue, so I don't have to juggle nearly as much as a good Hunter most likely does. (Between pets, traps, kiting, etc.) Of course, I have to admit, I'm digging the idea of the Bank Items mod, and may very well have to run off and check that one out for myself.

If you'd like to show off your UI, feel free to send it in with either a long description, or a short and sweet breakdown of mods and a quick note about you and why you designed your UI like you did. I look forward to hearing from you!

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PTR VOIP on PPC is GTG

2007-08-20T01:35:00.000-07:00

Just a note for you running WoW on the older Macs out there-- PowerPC Macs were the last to run WoW's built in voice chat system on the PTR, and as of build 7125 (the latest, I believe), voice chat now works.

If you're running one of those fancy shmancy new MacBook Pros with the Intel processors, you don't care, and if you're running WoW in Windows, well I'm sorry (did I mention that I'm also writing for our blogosphere cousin TUAW now?). But for those of you running PowerPC Macs, feel free to load up the PTR and do some voice chatting.

Was the headline too confusing? "Public Test Realm Voice-over-Internet-Protocol on PowerPC is good to go."

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WoW Moviewatch: The Evolution of World of Warcraft

2007-08-20T01:30:00.000-07:00

I think most of us are aware that World of Warcraft has undergone a great amount of tweaking since its initial conception -- and even more tweaking since its initial launch. This video just makes it easy to visualize the precise amount of change that's happened since it's been available for public scrutiny. So take a look and watch an unknown game turn into a game you love (that may or may not be gone now) turn into the game we're all playing today.

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Think you can do a better job?

2007-08-20T01:23:00.000-07:00

Many players insist loudly and long that they could do a better job then the Blizzard devs. If only they had the 3 years and $20 million required to create an MMORPG these days? Now they don't have that excuse any more.

Say hello to Multiverse, a free software development kit (reg required) that gives you all the tools you need to build your own MMORPG. Quests, Inventory, movement, combat and monster AI functionality is already built in plus a free set of starter assets is provided. They not only provide code and content, but customers as well. Any player who has played one Multiverse MMOG can play any Multiverse MMOG with the same program. And Multiverse handles all financial transactions.

What's left? Your creative vision of what an MMORPG should be. It wouldn't hurt if you had art design skills, modeling talent or class balancing experience. What does Multiverse get out of it? 20% of your revenue. Not a bad deal for all the free service they provide upfront. They also provide a movie of their GDC 2007 presentation that showcases early builds by some pioneering developers.

So knowing nothing stands between you and your vision of WoW 2.0, what kind of world would you make?

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Holla for Halaa

2007-08-20T01:18:00.000-07:00

Blizzard has posted a helpful page of tips on how to run, in my opinion, the best setup of organized World PvP so far: Halaa, the conquerable city in Nagrand.

The tips are pretty straightforward: stick together (team-- where's my CS homies at?), do as much bombing as you can before heading into the town, and make sure, once you've liberated Halaa from its evil oppressors, that you stick around to keep control and defend against any counterattacks. One thing I like about Halaa is that the Wyverns make it super easy for even lower geared players to join the fight and make a real difference. Plus, the layout is done well, and I like, as we heard at BlizzCon, that Blizzard went with a pretty persistent reward-- it's no fun to conquer something just to lose it again in 5 minutes.

And Halaa, surely, will serve as a model for the next big noninstanced PvP zone coming in Wrath of the Lich King, Lake Wintergrasp. Blizzard hasn't actually designed the zone yet, but they did share their goals with us-- multiple targets and rewards, a persistent effect, and of course while Halaa doesn't have them, siege weapons will make an appearance as well.

So if you haven't tried Halaa yet, definitely check it out. From everything we've heard, this kind of thing is the future of where World PvP is headed.

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Study says social games make people more social

2007-08-20T01:11:00.000-07:00

Our good friends at Joystiq reported on a study earlier from Nottingham Trent University (it's in England) about MMO gamers and their social behaviors. And supposedly-- are you sitting for this one?-- massively multiplayer online games actually help people meet others and make friends. Go figure!

They surveyed 1,000 gamers (which is not a huge sample, actually), and found that almost half had actually met another player in real life, and one in ten developed "physical relationships" with someone they'd met in a game. 40% of people discussed sensitive issues with online friends rather than real-life ones, and 30% of players were attracted to another player. 80% of players also played not only with online friends, but with real-life friends and family as well. And according to the study, women were more likely to both be attracted to other players, and to eventually date them, and while women play for "therapeutic refreshment," men play for "curiosity, astonishment, and interest."

50% of respondents said World of Warcraft was their game of choice, so while the study was actually about MMO players, it's not a stretch to say it's just about WoW players (and pretty hardcore players, too-- average play time per week was 22.85 hours!). Like I said, 1,000 people is a pretty small sample, but apparently a journal approved it-- the study will be published in CyberPsychology and Behavior.

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Get DirecTV, play WoW free for 11 months

2007-08-20T01:04:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are interested in satellite television (and in the USA), DIRECTV is currently running a promotion for new customers: if you subscribe to DIRECTV and activate your account, you get a code good for 11 months of game time. In case you don't already have a copy of the game, they'll also give you a code good for upgrading a trial account into a proper account, which also comes with a free month of game time. So that's 11 months for existing WoW players, or a copy of WoW and twelve months for new players.

Note that this offer doesn't apply to existing DIRECTV subscribers, and also that they won't give you a BC upgrade code, so you'll have to buy that yourself ($40) if you don't have it already. But if you're looking to set up satellite TV service, you should jump on this -- even at the cheapest subscription rate (buying six months at a time), 11 months is worth $143. What's better than WoW? Free WoW.

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Arcane Brilliance: The Magical Nation of Dalaran

2007-08-20T01:01:00.001-07:00

Once again we're back with Arcane Brilliance, where we discuss all things mage-like. This week I'd like to talk a bit about our roots as mages in the World of Warcraft universe. In order to understand who you are and where you are going, sometimes you have to learn about where you've been. In this case, both our past as mages and our future are tied to the same place, namely Dalaran, or more specifically The Magical Nation of Dalaran.

Long ago Dalaran was a city in the nation of Arathor, and began early in its history to serve as a sort of refuge for the magic practicers who lived under the strict tyrannical laws of Strom. Quickly Dalaran grew into a center for magical arts, and built for themselves a palace completely out of magic, the Violet Citadel. The society prospered, and was ruled by a magocracy, and more or less everything about Dalaran was tied to magic. Sound familiar? For those of you who play Blood Elves it should, and Dalaran's fate is much the same as that of Quel'Thalas. It makes sense, really, since the two cities were tied together in their love of magic, even creating the Order of Tirisfal as they banded together.

At the height of their power the magocrats of Dalaran founded the Kirin Tor, a ruling council dedicated to amassing every bit of knowledge surrounding magic, and when we talk about every bit you can believe it: every spell, every incantation, every item containing the least bit of magical spark, all of it was catalogued by this small sect within the city. At as result of this research, Dalaran was home to a massive magical library, something I am eager to see with my own magey eyes when we are finally able to set foot in the city again. That is if any of it still exists.

Much of the great city that was Dalaran is no more, having been destroyed first by the Horde and then by the Scourge, embodied in the demonic presence of Archimonde. Of what little was left, we cannot be certain, because the instant that the mages of the Kirin Tor got the least bit of strength back, they surrounded the city in a magical barrier, and have been working secretly to rebuild their home ever since. It's been said that there are about 3000 mages living within Dalaran today, and of them a little over 100 are members of the Kirin Tor. Despite the attacks on the city Dalaran continues to hold dominion over various places in Azeroth, including Nethegarde Keep and Lordamere Internment Camp.

As fascinating as the history of Dalaran is, what the future holds for the city is even more interesting. At BlizzCon we were told that Dalaran would serve as the capital city for the campaigns into Northrend, a city transported by magical means to the frozen continent to the north, to remain hovering in the air above the land. Why will the city be moved? Because the Kirin Tor led by Archmage Rhonin has been building their defenses over the years, knowing that Arthas/The Lich King would strike again in the hopes of destroying the mages of the world. In order to defend those of their order, they will move their city to where the fight will be, essentially bringing the mountain to Mohammed.

Think of what this means for mages as a class. This is the first time in the lore of Warcraft that I can recall the storyline surrounding one particular class as a whole. I remember a large portion of the War of the Ancients trilogy dealing with the dangers of magic, and the struggle between the druidic and the magical arts (i.e. between Malfurion and Illidan). But now one class is singled out to stand in the spotlight. The mages of Azeroth will be under attack, hence they will also be the main characters in the story to unfold. Although we may not know that story yet, we can be certain that mages will be at the center of it.

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Two Bosses Enter: Doom Lord Kazzak vs. Vaelastrasz the Corrupt

2007-08-20T00:45:00.000-07:00

Another weekend, and you know what that means -- it's time for another episode of Two Bosses Enter, WoW Insider's series of fantasy deathmatches between some of the toughest bosses in the World of Warcraft. Each week, two bosses walk into our arena, but only one of them gets to walk out again -- and at the very end, we'll wind up with one boss who wins out over all. The best part of all this is that you get to tell us who winds up the winner every week.

Some internet connectivity issues caused us to skip last week, but this week we're back with a vengeance, talking about one of my favorite boss fights in the game -- Vaelastrasz the Corrupt, who we're pitting against Doom Lord Kazzak. So what are you still reading this for? Read on to find out a bit about each of these bosses and tell us who would win if they met up!

Older players will remember the Outland outdoor boss Doom Lord Kazzak back when he was just Lord Kazzak, wiping out level 60 raid groups in the Blasted Lands. But with the release of The Burning Crusade, Kazzak went through the Dark Portal to Outland and is tougher than ever. He relies on a not-too-exciting combination of melee and shadow damage to bring down his opponents, doing Cleaves (frontal AoE melee damage), Thunderstomps (a short-range damage and slow), Shadowbolt Volleys (AoE shadowbolts), and Void Bolts (single target shadowbolts). But what makes him dangerous isn't his base damage output: it's his ability to heal and enrage. He heals a large amount of health whenever someone dies (which shouldn't come into play in this fight) and can also put a Twisted Reflection debuff which heals him a large amount when he does damage to the debuffed individual. Also, after about a minute he'll Enrage, increasing his damage by 30%. During this time he'll also send out regular Shadowbolt Volleys, and the Enrage will end after the 6th volley, and the Enrage timer starts again. A raid group with some strategy can usually survive one Enrage, but the second is frequently deadly, so in this fight it's important to bring Kazzak down quickly.

If you'd like full details on the Kazzak fight, I point you to WoWWiki.

I doubt many people visit Vaelastrasz in Blackwing Lair these days, but there was a time when he was the bane of many a raid group attempting to progress. But just because he's in an old-world raid dungeon doesn't mean he's a pushover. Vaelastrasz hits his targets with heavy fire and melee damage, doing a Fire Nova (AoE fire damage), Flame Breath (frontal AoE fire damage), and Cleave (frontal AoE melee damage). The trouble with this fight for players is that it's on a timer -- at the beginning of the fight, you receive a buff giving you (essentially) unlimited health, mana, and rage regeneration for three minutes. Without this buff, it would be unlikely that you'd be able to do enough damage to bring him down, meaning the enconter is on a timer. However, Kazzak doesn't need any buffs to dish out the damage, so this hard-for-players encounter may not be so difficult for another boss.

For full encounter details, check out WoWWiki.

As always, please remember that we are attempting to compare these bosses with approximately equal level, health, and damage output. We're also not considering the instant-kill abilities that each of these bosses have, presuming the bosses themselves are immune to these things. When you're voting, remember we're trying to compare the skills and fighting styles of the two without making it a mathmatical equation. But keeping that in mind, tell us -- who wins?

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Breakfast Topic: What one buff would you give your class?

2007-08-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

Dolarhyde of the Boulderfist server posed a simple, but interesting question on the official forums today: what one buff would you give your class?

The reason I almost always choose druids in the multitude of MMORPGs I play has less to do with RP and more to do with versatility. I love hybrid classes, especially the more offensive ones that can still heal (hello shammie alt!) So when it comes to what's missing from my class, it's hard for me to put my finger on it. Hybrids tend to do so well, but to give them another major ability could water down other classes.

Many fellow druids believe this class is missing some serious crowd control ability, though we have it in limited forms through Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Force of Nature (aka treant pets), Hibernate (beast and dragonkin only) and off tanking in bear form. I'm not sure we need a Priest level AE fear or a Rogue sap. Other players have called for more aggro tools for druids, especially Balance druids. But the class is built to survive a beating and isn't as squishy as those with better aggro management abilities.

I'm stumped on what buff I would give druids, but I'm interested to see what our readers would give their own class. Let's hear it.

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Test a spec for free or try a new class on the PTR

2007-08-20T00:34:00.000-07:00

When the Public Test Realm is up, any player who has had an active account since November 2006 can copy their character over to help test the new update. During the Patch 2.1 Public Test phase, I copied my L64 feral druid over and respecced to Balance. Fortunately, I had a decent set of Balance gear with me and was able to give the spec a good test drive. I enjoyed it enough that I eventually went Balance when I hit L70 on the live servers.

With Patch 2.2 currently on the Public Test Realm, Blizzard is allowing players to copy up to 4 premade L70 characters to the Test Realm. This time, I decided to see what it was like to play some other classes I long admired, so I copied a shaman, a priest and a rogue.

Each toon starts out with a full set of raid gear and PvP gear for different specs as well as plenty of trinkets, rings, weapons, drink, bandages and gems. They also get epic mounts, both land and air. They have none of their talent points assigned, so you can spec them immediately, but you will have to find a trainer to get the higher levels of any spells/abilities you pick up in your talent tree.

Read on for my impressions on each class after the jump.

I started with an undead priest. I named her Moldylocks and specced her for shadow. In her bags I found the gear set to complement her new spec and headed to Outlands to see what it was like to solo. I was surprised how quickly a shadow priest can down a mob. Faster than my Balance druid, though the comparison isn't exact due to the difference in gear between my main and these PTR premades. Still, I can see why priests spec shadow and stay there. Great damage and great survivability. Mind control was fun to play with as well.

Next I logged in the tauren shaman, Totemtail (not so supringly, the name Shamoo was already taken) and immediately specced him for enhancement after reading this great guide to enhancement shamans. I ran him to Shadowmoon Valley and was again shocked at the speed of killing mobs. Dual-wielding PvP maces with Windstrike enchantment I quickly became addicted to seeing double crits on the Stormstrike ability for over 1k each and watching the mob's health drop from 60% to zero. I barely took any damage, but each mob drained about 40% of my mana. I suppose if I didn't go all out with every spell and totem I had, I wouldn't have such a large mana drain. But I wasn't grouped so I threw everything I had at each mob and had a lot of fun doing it.

Finally, I logged on my undead rogue, Manchewer, and specced for Assassination. I poisoned my PvP daggers and stalked Firewing blood elves in Terokkar. I was very unimpressed. Killing mobs took longer than the other two classes I tried. And I had trouble dealing with adds. Admittedly I haven't played a rogue past L15 before, but I do know the basics and I didn't have much Live Realm experience with the other two classes either.

I'm glad I got to try out these classes. It helps me decide which alts to pursue. I'm definitely going to spend more time with my enhancement shaman after this. For anyone considering changing their spec or leveling a new alt, I highly recommend giving it a risk-free whirl on the PTR. You can request character copies here. I've copied over a mage, hunter, paladin and warlock. I'll report back on those next.

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Around Azeroth: I can fly!

2007-08-20T00:29:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite games at the Darkmoon Faire is the cannon that you can shoot yourself from. When you launch from the cannon, you will have a lovely set of wings (as seen above) which come with a quite handy slow fall effect. However, this is the first time I've seen the cannon launch cats into the air... or perhaps this shot, sent in by reader Donna, is a preview of the upcoming Druid Gryphon form? Only time will tell!

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WoW Moviewatch: Soloing Blackrock Depths

2007-08-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

I find this video of a level 70 Paladin soloing Blackrock Depths to be fairly impressive -- but since we've already seen a paladin solo the Blood Furnace, perhaps it's not as impressive as I think. But as someone who's played through the instance a time or two, I'm pretty amazed to see someone soloing the Lyceum, an area of numerous mobs on an exceedingly fast respawn timer that's wiped many a full party. But what am I saying -- this is a video with aa Paladin, and the more mobs hitting them, the happier they are, right?

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Guild banks are now scheduled for Patch 2.3

2007-08-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

Guild banks were initially intended to go live with the Burning Crusade launch. Apparently Blizzard wasn't happy with them and postponed their implementation until "a later date." That date has been confirmed by a blue on the WoW Europe forums as Patch 2.3.

According to this preview article, guild banks are designed so that every member of the guild can deposit or withdraw cash or items. Limits on transactions can be set so a new recruit doesn't walk off with all the good stuff. Also, all activity will be viewable by the guild so the guild officers can't keep the best things for themselves without everyone else knowing.

My favorite feature of the new guild bank system is the ability to use guild funds when paying for repair costs. A new button will appear on all repair NPCs and repair-bots. This function can also be set by the guild leader to work for only certain ranks within the organization.

Soon we'll be saying goodbye to the guild mules and hello to an era where guild resources are viewable, if not available, to all.

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World Of Warcraft Gold Heaven @ Worldofwarcraft2.co.uk

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